


Pouring Raindrops Back into a Cloud

by bricoleur10



Category: Leverage
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Complete, Family, Friendship, Gen, Head Injury, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Re-establishing Trust, Team!fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-27
Updated: 2015-02-23
Packaged: 2018-03-03 19:10:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 29,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2873798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bricoleur10/pseuds/bricoleur10
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the wake of an injury that leaves him missing memories, Eliot has to decide whether he wants to stay with these people who are calling themselves his family, these people he trusts without understanding why. And if he does stay, will his broken brain be enough to get him through?</p><p>Amnesia!fic. Team!Fic</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was written before season four, so spoilers for anything up until then is fair game, but anything after that is completely disregarded. 
> 
> This story was written with a list of one-word prompts. Originally I was going to do one sentence per prompt, but my muse had other ideas. 
> 
> Disclaimer: Characters and what-not belong to John Rogers and other such lovely individuals. I just take them out to play with them.

**Chapter 1**

“Honestly, doc,” Nate approaches the man in the quiet hallway, while the others are in Eliot’s room, hovering and protecting, “What are the chances he’ll wake up?” 

The doctor sighs tiredly but doesn’t bow out of the moment. “His brain’s capable,” the older man says, “He just needs a reason.” 

\----------

“It’s too cold in here,” Parker says quietly, voice echoing in the tiny room. “No wonder he’s not waking up, guys. It’s just too cold.” 

Hardison doesn’t want to argue the logistics of brain damage with her, and Sophie is too busy whispering pleas in Eliot’s ear to respond, so he hacks into the hospital’s mainframe and let’s Parker adjust the heat, the lights, the security codes, and anything else she wants to adjust. 

Hardison doubts it’ll do any good, but the warmth does feel nice.

\----------

There are shadows chasing him. Shadows from his past, his future, his victims, his team, his family; they’re in every corner of his mind, every crevice he tries to hide in is dark and full of shadows. He knows there’s something he has to be doing now, a place he needs to go back to, a home that might welcome him, people that need him outside of this place. But every time he turns around there’s another shadow, another memory, another failure. He’s getting tired of running from them. 

\----------

“The sun’s about to set,” Nate announces to the room. He stares out the window at it, until the brilliant colors make him angry and he has to look away. 

“How many does that make?” Sophie asks quietly. Nate watches her watch the others and feels numb. 

“Too many.” 

\----------

He can hear them. Inside his head, separate from the screams and the memories, Eliot can hear them. A trace of a plea here, an angry monologue there. He knows they’re waiting, watching, maybe even praying for him to be okay. It drives him to the surface. 

\----------

When he wakes up the older woman is crying. The younger woman is hugging him too tight, the man in charge is asking him question upon question, and the younger man is shaking his head, mumbling incomprehensible, fragmented sentences and eventually hugging him, too. 

He soothes the woman on instinct, hugs the other one back, answers the questions, and even manages a half hug for the younger guy. His brain knows these people won’t hurt him, but that’s all it knows.  
When their hysteria dies away and they’re just starting to look relieved, he knows he needs to ask, before they get too happy. “Who-who are you?” 

He sees their hearts break.

Later, the women and the younger man leave and Eliot’s left alone with the one in charge of them. That man – Nate, he’s told but doesn’t recall – talks to him for a long time. His words are factual, rambling, emotional, and true. They make Eliot want to run. 

A few days later the doctors tell him that he’s physically fine, but the memory loss needs to be addressed, and they’ve got people here that can do that, don’t worry. 

All Eliot hears is _fine_. He leaves the hospital, finds a motorcycle, and doesn’t look back. 

\----------

He remembers more than he wants to. 

Eliot Spencer. 

Retrieval specialist.

Killer. 

Wanted. 

Hunted. 

Hunter. 

Protector. 

Evil. 

Smart. 

He knows who he is, knows what he’s done, to a point. His memories start to get vague and incomplete in the moments leading up to a head wound that the older man he knows but doesn’t know – Nate – had told him happened five years ago. Well before he’d known these people. 

His brain wants to remember, he can feel them tickling his subconscious, looking for a way through, but his brain’s as stubborn as he is, and they’re not getting anywhere. 

He gathers necessitates – there are some things that no amount of time or memory damage can change - and then heads for the nearest airport. He remembers a lot about his old life, if not enough. The one thing that blares louder than everything else is _run_. 

The killer runs. 

The wanted and the hunted run. 

The protector runs. 

Evil runs. 

Smart runs. 

RunRunRun. 

\----------

The plane is ancient and they hit turbulence every second of the five hour flight. It makes his head hurt and his stomach roll. 

The people he doesn’t remember but should, they’re looking for him. He can feel it, he knows it; because a part of him, a part of himself that he can’t access right now but that exists all the same, _knows_ them. 

Running might be a mistake, but it’s the only one that feels right. 

\----------

“He’s not using any of the identities I ever set up for him,” Hardison’s been clicking away at his computer for hours. 

“Of course he’s not,” Nate says slowly, “He doesn’t remember.” 

“I put out searches at all the airlines in the tristate area,” the hacker goes on, oblivious to Nate’s short-tempered jab. “FBI grade. If anyone sees him, we’ll get a hit.” 

“Would Eliot run away?” Parker asks then, sounding, for the life of all of them, just too damn young. “What if he’s just...hiding?” 

“Parker,” Sophie puts a comforting hand on her shoulder, and Hardison and Nate shut up when she starts to talk, because they want to hear the _why_ , too. “Eliot...he doesn’t remember a lot of stuff, because  
of the accident. He doesn’t remember us, or...or that he’s safe now.” 

Parker huffs, “We keep each other safe. That’s what we do.” 

“But Eliot doesn’t remember that right now.” Sophie repeats, trying so hard to get her to understand. “The last thing...the last thing Eliot remembers for sure is being in danger. I don’t know exactly what’s going on in his brain right now, Parker, but I do know how Eliot responds to danger.” 

“He fights.” Parker says easily. 

“If he can see it,” Sophie nods. “If he can’t...” 

“He chases it.” 

“Yeah,” Sophie sighs sadly. 

“Guys,” Hardison clears his throat then, waving excitedly, “The computer got a hit. It’s...Our window here is tiny, but we might have time-”

He doesn’t get the rest of the sentence out before all of them are jumping up and moving around, ready to chase down their lost teammate.

\----------

There’s a gravestone in the far west part of the cemetery. The name’s faded away over time, nearly illegible now, but the carved angel on top remains a solid fixture. 

Eliot doesn’t know why he’d come here, only that it had been important at the time. Now that he’s here, though, he’s tired. His head aches from trying to remember, and his stomach is still rolling from the plane. 

He sits down on the grass and closes his eyes. 

It’s not safe, he’s not safe, they might not be safe. He needs to get back. 

Protector. 

Hitter. 

Fighter. 

Reliable. 

He knows without knowing, but that doesn’t stop the clenching in his gut. He wants to do his job, but he can’t remember what or where or when or why. 

So he closes his eyes and, just this once, let’s someone else be the reliable hitter fighter protector. 

Just this once, he puts his faith in angels. 

\----------

They trace him until Hardison’s computers and Sophie’s contacts run dry. They’d gone west; chasing a man they can only hope is Eliot. They’ve stolen plane tickets and hotel rooms, they’ve conned desk clerks,  
judges, airline pilots, lawyers, and even a governor, all in an attempt to find the missing piece of their family. 

It’s been a week, and they’re no closer to Eliot than they had been back in Boston. 

Parker sits down next to him on the hotel room bed eight days into their search and taps his shoulder. “The shower stuff in the bathroom smells like roses.”

Hardison will never fully understand why it’s those words, her innocent, meaningless words that cause weeks’ worth of frustration, anger, and pain to come punching out of him in gasping sobs.

\----------

He doesn’t know what he’s looking for. Wandering up and down streets, eyes blurry around the edges, sights narrowed in on finding a cause, a reason, a drive to keep going. 

He’s itching for a fight, is the plain and simple truth of it. He doesn’t know who he’s supposed to be fighting anymore – good guys, bad guys, villains, criminals, cops – he forgets what side he’s on. 

His need to fight is almost innocent in its simplicity. It doesn’t _matter_ what his stance on good and evil is anymore, he just needs to find a target, and soon. 

\----------

Maybe it’s his imagination, but Hardison swears the world’s been more violent since they’d lost Eliot. 

There’d been that fistfight at the bar, the scrapple on the plane, a mugging they’d heard about near their first hotel, the fender bender that had come to blows right in the middle of a busy intersection – and now  
this. 

A man with a gun in the convenience store that Hardison had only ducked into because he’d had a craving for gummy frogs that could not go ignored. 

“Empty the register,” the man in the ski mask growls out, ignoring Hardison and the other two customers completely. “Now.” 

Maybe it’s his imagination, maybe the world has always been like this, but it sure as hell feels a lot more dangerous without Eliot by his side. 

\----------

A homeless man approaches Eliot as he continues his slow decent down a busy city street. 

“You need to go back to them,” this man says, gravity in his tone, weighing it down and making Eliot pause.

“Lay off the drugs.” He suggests to the man before he keeps on walking. 

“The kingdom’s not safe without you there.” The homeless man insists, talking louder as Eliot walks away. “They’ll die without you.” He’s practically screaming over the bustle of the street, “You keep them safe. You  
keep them _together_.” 

\----------

Hardison figures he doesn’t really have a lot of options right now. He can either keep his mouth shut and hope the crazy guy with the gun doesn’t start shooting, or he can talk talk talk, until his jaw gets sore and he’s practically begging for death. 

The latter option is by far the stupider of the two, but he’s never been good at keeping quiet in unknown situations, and no one’s there to stomp on his foot and growl his name until he remembers about living and not pissing off the guy with the gun. 

He starts talking, louder and louder, over the man’s objections, over the sirens that the tripped silent alarm had brought, over the sound of the safety getting clicked off. 

He talks and talks and talks and talks. 

\----------

He’s always been like this. He can’t help thinking that as he walks down the street. Before the army, or the hitting, or the retrieving, before Moreau, even. He’s been a fighter his whole life. His first memory – he’s been thinking about those a lot lately, his memories – is fighting. A child on the playground; he doesn’t remember much besides the blood, the fierce desire to hurt, the calmness he’d felt afterwards. 

No one had nurtured his violence, at least not in childhood. His momma had told him not to hit, and his daddy had said, “never,” too, but had added, “unless you’re protectin’ yourself, or your sister.”  
But Eliot hadn’t wanted to fight in self-defense; he hadn’t wanted to play the hero. He’d just wanted to hit hit hit until there was nothing left of whatever he’d been hitting. 

The destruction of violence had left him calm as a child, and does still to this day. 

He’s not calm right now. He can’t remember, and he can’t fight; he feels like he’s lost his family, but can’t recall having them in the first place and that makes it worse. Like a whisper of almost, a fading dream of a happily ever after. He wants to cause pain, to punch, to destroy, to hit hit hit until he can get it back. 

He just wants it back. 

\----------

He passes a church with big oak doors and gargoyles on the pillars by the steps. He pauses and looks up. There’s a crest above the door, Latin cursive decorates the inside of it. 

It takes Eliot’s brain a moment longer than it should to decipher the dead language that he never really uses and isn’t very good at to begin with. When his brain gets a handle on the foreign words, he reads the translation out loud. 

“Those who search out destruction will find only chaos.” 

Before he can dwell on that platitude for too long a cop car races down the street behind him, sirens blaring, two more following it within seconds. 

Searching out destruction has always been a pastime of his, and he’s no stranger to chaos. The Latin crest may read like a warning to some, but to him it’s an invitation. 

\----------

The tiny store where the police cars are gathered looks pathetic from the outside. Rotting wooden sign displaying some clichéd name, beer and cigarette logos illuminated even in the daytime. There’s a toy cactus and a plastic tumbleweed by either side of the door. 

Eliot crouches as he gets closer. 

Five cop cars, nine guns, two megaphones, and an approaching SWAT team. 

Inside, there’s one man with a gun, three customers, and the owner – hostages. 

Eliot ducks behind the building, avoiding all the cops easily enough, and jimmies the lock on the backdoor. He’s in the building for seconds before he hears the endless chatter of a voice he recognizes. 

\----------

He hits the man from behind. He grabs the gun when he starts to fall. He releases the clip and tosses the metal weapon to the ground, smirking at its sudden uselessness. The guy sways on his feet, but manages to throw a punch. Eliot ducks easily, and feels the passion of the fight overtake him. 

He jabs right, ducks left, and uses the inside of his palm to bust the guy’s nose. He could have ended it there, while the man in the mask was bleeding and bent over, but this is the first time he’s felt anything other than confusion or pain or fear since he’d woken up, and he’s not willing to give that up yet. 

He lets the man stand tall once more, even lets him get a punch in. The fist feels solid and real when it connects with his gut. Eliot grins and says, “C’mon.” 

The man swings again, and Eliot retaliates with a wide left-handed jab. It lands harder than he would have liked and the man goes down and stays there.

\----------

Eliot knows he can’t kill him. Can’t stomp the bones in his neck until they crack, can’t find a knife and stab, can’t even pick up the gun, reload it and shoot; he can’t do any of that, because the man with the voice he knows – Hardison, he forces himself to think. _Hardison_ – is gaping and wide-eyed. The cops are crashing through the door and in a moment this will be over. 

He takes a deep breath, then another, and calms down some. He doesn’t want to kill, this man isn’t worth the kill, and he’s never killed before in front of the - Hardison. 

It’s picturesque, his brain tell him. The two of them standing over an unconscious bad guy, the cops taking credit now that the hard part’s done, winning the fight and saving the day; they’ve done this before. It’s nostalgic. It’s _familiar_.

He looks over and smiles at the tall man he knows but doesn’t know. “We’re good at chaos, huh?” 

\----------

Hardison stares at Eliot all through the cops questioning them. He stares while he lies and offers fake ID’s and a cover story. He stares while he calls Nate, says, “I found him. I found Eliot.” 

He stares when Eliot responds, “Technically, man, I think I found you.” 

He stares as they’re walking down the street to the hotel the team’s staying at. 

He stares like he’s afraid Eliot’s going to vanish again. He _is_ afraid that Eliot might vanish again. 

Eliot isn’t staring back. Instead, he catches his reflection in every widow they pass, like he’s mesmerized by it. And right when Hardison’s about to make a crack about vanity, if only to lighten the mood, Eliot asks,  
“How long has my hair been like this?” 

The hacker sputters, clears his throat, and verifies, “What? Long?” 

His wayward teammate nods and glances over again, at the blackened glass of a storefront. The sun had gone down while they’d been talking to the cops and now every window is a perfectly reflective surface. 

“Yeah,” the older man grunts. 

“Whole time I’ve known you.” 

Eliot doesn’t respond for several beats. When he does it’s quiet and almost sad. “How long’s that been? I know y’all told me at the hospital, but...” 

“’Bout three years.” Hardison tries to say it without emotion, but he doubts he manages. 

The hitter breathes out, long and steady. “Okay.” 

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Memory is the sense of loss, and loss pulls us after it - Marilynee Robinson_

Chapter 2

 

The tiny blonde girl – the thief named Parker – jumps into his arms the second they walk through the door. For a heartbeat he wants to throw her off and defend himself, an instinct created by years of being attacked. But his brain says _no_ and _don’t_. So he wraps his arms around her instead and waits for the panic to pass. 

It doesn’t take long. 

He’s never been very good at recognizing his own emotions – maybe because he’s been bottling them up for so long, maybe because he’s just bad at that kind of thing – but ever since he’d gotten out of the hospital he’s been paying more attention to them. 

His memories of the past five years are gone; dates, facts, events, timelines, they’re all lost somewhere and might never come back. But his emotions, his instincts… they’re still pretty strong. It’s a defense mechanism, probably; biological and evolutional. He doesn’t care, really, it only matters that he trusts what he feels, even if he can’t remember why. 

When the thief had landed in his arms, his first, instinctual reaction had been _fight_ , but the moment that had passed a different, stronger one had taken its place: _protect_. 

“You’re back!” She jumps out of his arms, grinning wide and happy, like this is some sort of festive occasion. “You saved Hardison and now you’re back.” 

“I’m back,” he agrees, seeking out the gaze of the man in charge – Nate. 

He looks sad and relived. They all do. 

“You staying?” Nate asks him levelly, waiting for his response like this is Eliot’s decision to make, not his or any of theirs. 

He thinks about it. He looks at the man he’d found in the convenience store – Hardison – and the tiny blonde who’s still clinging to his arm – Parker. He looks at the older woman, the grifter - Sophie – and feels something almost maternal about her. It’s there next to the urge to protect and...a faint sting of betrayal. 

He doesn’t know for sure if he wants to stay with this people – his brain’s not telling him and his emotions are ambiguous – but he’s pretty sure he doesn’t want to leave again. 

“Yeah,” he nods eventually. “I’m stayin’” 

\----------

Hardison wakes up in the morning and stumbles into the kitchen area of their hotel room. It’s a nice place they’re staying in this time, with two adjoining suites. Nate and Hardison had been crashing in one while Parker and Sophie had taken the other, bigger one with the attached kitchen that Hardison’s heading for now. Eliot, after he’d gotten back last night, had crashed on the sofa in this one, though Hardison doesn’t know whether or not he’d slept.

The answer to that becomes blatantly obvious when he makes it to the kitchen. “Whoa,” he comments, and only notices after the fact that Eliot’s sitting at the table with a cup of coffee. “This place is...pristine.” 

“Couldn’t sleep,” the hitter shrugs, confirming Hardison’s suspicions. “Wanted to cook, but it’s a hotel room, so...” he trails off, shrugging again. 

“Well, we can get back to Boston today, if ya want,” he suggests, still absently marveling at the cleanliness of the room while he pours himself some coffee and sits down at the table with the other man. “Nate’s apartment’s gotta be better than this place, right?” 

“Nate’s apartment.” Eliot echoes. 

“Yeah, yeah.” Hardison clears his throat, reminds himself that this is all new for Eliot. “It’s kind of our headquarters. Where we go over cases and plan and stuff.” 

“But we don’t all...live there?” He asks, and Hardison has to laugh. 

“Nah, man.” He tells him. 

“Right.” He nods again, staring contemplatively at his coffee mug. “So where do I...” 

“Live?” Hardison guesses. “Man, I don’t got a clue. Y’never told us.” 

“I thought we were a team.” Eliot looks up at him, confused and kind of pissed. “Thought we trusted each other.”

“We are, and we do.” Hardison assures, doing his best stab at sincerity. “You’re just very...private.” 

“Yeah,” He looks down again, eyes focused on something Hardison can’t see. “That sounds like me.” 

\----------

“We have to help him remember,” Sophie tells Parker as they’re packing up their bags. The grifter’s happy to be leaving this hotel, but she knows that as soon as they get back to Boston things are going to change. 

“The doctors said he might remember on his own,” Parker recalls, repacking the same duffle she’s packed already several times. Eliot’s in the other suite with Nate and Hardison. Since the events of last night, their hitter has seemed to be more comfortable in the presence of Hardison – and maybe Parker, too, it’s hard to tell with them all shoved in a tiny space like this – than he has been with Sophie, possibly Nate. 

“And he might,” Sophie agrees, “But we still have to try to help him.” 

“Well, how do we do that?” She asks bluntly, expecting Sophie to have the answers. 

If only she did. “I’m not sure, Parker.” She sighs. “Treat him like you normally would, I guess.” She thinks about it. “The doctor said familiar people and places might help.” 

“We’re familiar.” She notes. 

“True.” She nods. 

“It’s like a recreation.” The thief says after a moment of pause. 

The grifter doubles over her words and lands on the response of, “What?” 

“A recreation.” She repeats. “A new creation of the same thing. Like a forgery, only not. People do it with plays and movies, only when you do it with art, it’s not called new art or a remake, it’s called a recreation.” 

“Ah,” it takes her a moment, but Sophie catches on to Parker’s train of thought. The girl really is quite brilliant, once you muck through the crazy. “Of course. Yes, I’d say it is something like that.” 

“We get to help recreate Eliot,” she nods, mostly to herself. “I think we can do that.” 

“Yes, Parker,” Sophie sighs, zipping her final piece of clothing into her duffle, safe and sound. “I think we can.” 

\--

“So, why here?” Nate approaches him in the lobby of the hotel, a little while before they’re due to leave. The hitter’s staring at a decorative tapestry hanging on one of the walls. It looks Native American in origin, and the mastermind wanders if Eliot understands the story that’s being told on it. 

“Why here what?” He asks without turning to face him. 

“Why _here_?” Nate emphasizes, sitting down in a chair slightly behind the man as he remains standing, doing his best to minimize any sense of authority he might unintentionally give off – a suggestion Sophie had made vehemently. “Why’d you run here?” 

“Don’t really know,” he shrugs, still staring at the art. “Felt like the right thing to do.” 

“Do you have...something, in this town?” Nate asks carefully. “A past? Family?” 

“An old friend’a mine’s buried here,” Eliot says it casually enough, but Nate can’t help but be surprised. Eliot so very rarely talks about his past, and while Nate wants badly to press for answers, more insight into the member of his team that’s always been the biggest mystery to him, he feels like doing so would be taking unfair advantage of something that isn’t Eliot’s fault. 

He hums noncommittally. He won’t press, but he also won’t stop Eliot if he wants to talk on his own. 

“We were in the army together,” Eliot says, but his voice is distracted. “This thing,” he points to the tapestry. “It’s fake.” 

Nate shifts his full attention to the artwork in question, and then stands to examine the plaque mounted to the wall underneath it. “Yes,” he agrees after a studying it a minute longer. “It is. It isn’t horribly uncommon for hotels and restaurants and the like to buy fake art. Sometimes they don’t even know it’s fake. Not exactly the world’s worst crime.” He chuckles a little, but the other man doesn’t stop staring. 

“Eliot?” 

“I shouldn’t know that,” he gestures to the woven art. “I don’t know why I do.” 

“You’re remembering.” Nate can’t help but smile at the implication. “When we get back to Boston, your memory-”

“No,” Eliot interrupts. 

“No what?” Nate asks, suddenly afraid. 

“I don’t remember,” the younger man shakes his head. “I don’t know _why_ it’s a fake. I don’t _remember_ ,” he repeats. “I just _know_ that it is.” 

Finally, Eliot turns around to face him. His expression is set in something Nate can’t read. That, at least, hasn’t changed. 

“I know things,” he says evenly, looking the mastermind up and down, almost like he’s sizing him up. “They aren’t memories, just things that I know.” 

“Okay,” Nate swallows thickly, “Like what?” 

\----------

Eliot narrows his eyes, wondering if the other man truly wants to walk down this path or if he’s just willing to go there for Eliot’s sake or out of curiosity. It doesn’t matter, because he’d asked, and Eliot’s going to   
answer. 

“I know that you’re acting different.” He shakes his head a little, “I can’t put my finger on what’s not right, but I know you’re faking something. You’re supposed to have this...sense of grandeur, like you’re in charge of all of us. Because you are, and I know that, but you’re not acting like it.” 

“Okay,” the older man nods slowly, “Keep going.” 

“I know that I protect all of you,” Eliot shares, though given what they’d told him at the hospital he doubts that’s news. “I protect all of you, but especially Hardison and Parker. I don’t know why. Maybe because they’re younger. I don’t know.” 

“Something like that,” Nate agrees. He shoves his hands in his pockets and looks intrigued. Eliot takes another glance around the lobby, makes sure again that they’re alone. They are. “What else?”

“Sophie,” Eliot starts, and Nate’s eyes get smaller, defensive. He’s protective of her, then. He doesn’t need his memory up and working to figure out that there’s something more than friendship between them, but   
that’s not his concern right now. “She...she betrayed me. In the past, and it’s better now, but she did.” 

Nate’s eyes go wide. “What do you remember-”

“Nothing.” Eliot cuts him off, sharp edge in his tone born out of frustration. “I don’t _remember_. That’s what I’ve been sayin’. I just _know_. Just like I know you did the same thing.” 

“You don’t trust me,” Nate guesses. 

Eliot shakes his head. “No, I _do_.” He bites. “I do trust you, all of you. I just _don’t know why_.”

“Because we’re you’re team,” he says slowly, as if trying to gauge whether or not these are the right words. “We’re...we’re family.” 

“I don’t _know_ you, though,” Eliot’s frustrated again. Trying to remember things that aren’t in his brain anymore, it makes him angry. 

“But you trust me,” the older man half smiles at him. 

“Yeah,” he admits, before pointing out once again that, “I just don’t know why.” 

“If this were a game of chess,” Nate states, “I think we’d call this a stalemate.” 

Eliot couldn’t agree more. 

\----------

Nate’s kitchen is lavish compared to the one at the hotel. There’re pots and pans and vegetables and frozen meat and big bowls and so many things that Eliot recognizes, so many thing that he _knows_ are   
his, despite not having the proof. 

“I like it,” he tells Sophie, the only other person in the room with him. “Feels like...” 

“Home?” She fills in hopefully. 

Eliot thinks back to Kentucky and Aimee. Then back farther, to Oklahoma and his momma. “Not exactly.” He sighs after a moment, turning again so he doesn’t have to see her face fall. “But close.” 

He doesn’t feel trapped here like he had in Oklahoma, and he’s not afraid of disappointing these people the way he’d been afraid with Aimee nearly all the time. Quietly he mutters, “Maybe it’s better.” 

\---------- ## ----------

They’ve been back in Boston just shy of twenty four hours when Eliot leaves Nate’s apartment in the dead of night. Parker follows him because she’s afraid of losing him again. She knows that Eliot isn’t _hers_ like the money she steals is hers, or like Hardison might be hers someday, but she feels like a part of him is. 

Or, maybe more accurately, they’re _his_. His to protect and keep safe. And because every action has an equal and opposite reaction, he’s theirs by default. 

Maybe she’s just scared. 

For whatever reason, when he leaves Nate’s apartment that night, Parker slips into the shadows and follows him. 

They end up on the other side of town, down by the riverfront where all the historical buildings with creaky floors and no security systems live. She wonders for a moment if they’re there to steal something, and she gets excited. 

But then Eliot stops, just near the ledge overlooking the river, and stands still. 

Yeah, she decides as she watches him watch the water - too cold, too far away – he might be theirs and he might be lost right now, but mostly...mostly she’s just scared. 

\----------

He remembers Moreau. 

Feeling for the first time since he’d gotten out of the army like maybe it might be okay if someone else took care of him. He’d been young and alone, and Moreau had given him exactly what he’d needed, without making the price too steep. At least, not too steep for Eliot, who’d had a history of killing for a lot less than a sense of family and safety. 

He knows that the man is in jail now – it’s one of the first things Nate had told him in the hospital, before Eliot had taken off – and the hitter’s glad that he had. If he hadn’t, Eliot might have tried to go back to that. 

He hates Moreau, he remembers that, too; and maybe he wouldn’t have gone, even if he could have. But the want had been there. The want is still there, a little bit. 

He doesn’t remember Moreau fondly. He hasn’t blocked out the murder and mutilation. 

_One time. Just this once. Worth it. Necessary loss._

_Screaming. Muffled. Christmas lights. Big tree._

_Presents. Hot chocolate. Mistletoe. Cookies._

_Blood on green. Blood splatters up. Red mistletoe. Ruined cookies._

_Just this once. Necessary loss. Worth it._

He remembers his hate just as well as he remembers their screams. Nothing about those memories is gone, and maybe that’s what this is, he finally thinks. A punishment. A karmic _fuck you_ for all the horrific things he’d done in his past. 

Those he gets to remember – his regrets, his lowest points, the places he’d been where he’d questioned his own humanity – those are still in his head and always will be. But this life he’s apparently built for himself, with these people that he knows he trusts even of it doesn’t make any sense, that’s all gone now. 

The good times he imagines they must have had, the building blocks of that intangible, the jobs, the penance of working for the innocent, the redeemed victims – those are what he’d lost. 

He doesn’t remember being a good man anymore. But being a monster will never leave him. 

This, he supposes, is exactly what he deserves. 

\----------

A figure emerges from the shadows and Eliot immediately prepares to fight. 

He hadn’t noticed anyone following him, hadn’t sensed anyone around. He’d thought he was alone, because he hadn’t been paying attention. And that had been stupid. 

No matter how bad he’s hurt, no matter what he can’t remember, surviving has always been priority one, and he’d dropped the ball. 

He’s tense and ready for a fight, and beneath the calmness of that there’s a tingle of relief. Maybe this time he’ll get to kill. 

He really wants to kill. 

He turns away from the water. The person, whoever it is, is standing near the edge of a circle of light cast by one of the lamps on a nearby building. 

It’s a woman, Eliot sees. Tall and lean with long hair. She looks surreal in the half light. Mythical and like a dream. 

His need to fight dims and something in him pangs with regret. 

He won’t be killing anyone tonight. 

\----------

Parker approaches slowly.

She’d seen this thing on TV once, a collection of homemade videos about people who’d kept wild animals as pets – tigers, alligators, coyotes, even a wolf – and in every video those animals had attacked. Years, the   
people had said; years they’d had these creatures in their domestic lives. Then one day, seemingly out of nowhere, they’d become viscous. They’d all maimed, if not killed, the people who had been taking care of them. 

Parker’s not sure why that memory finds her now, but she figures it probably means something. 

She gets within ten feet of Eliot and stops. He sees her now, knows who she is. 

“What’re ya doin’ out here?” He asks, and his voice sounds tired and resigned. 

She has to wonder what he’d been expecting. 

“I followed you.” She says simply. 

“Why?” He asks. 

She takes a few steps closer, putting even less distance between them. He turns back around and faces the water. They’re not very high up – maybe fifty feet – but it’s winter and it’s nighttime. 

“Are you going to jump?” She asks calmly, keeping an eye on his feet, planning a strategy for _yes, no,_ and _maybe_. 

“What?” He turns back to her and scrunches up his entire face. It’s an expression she’s seen on him so many times before that, for a moment, she nearly forgets the context of the situation

“It’s probably really cold,” she gestures a little bit, as if he doesn’t know what she’s talking about. “But we’re not very high, and I know you know how to swim. You most likely wouldn’t die.” 

“Gee, thanks for that,” he snarks, and then turns back around. 

She doesn’t know what that means. She takes a deep breath and steps forward some more, until she’s close enough to touch him. 

He flinches when her hand finds his shoulder. She immediately retracts it. 

“You don’t like touching people,” he turns again and stares hard. 

“No,” she agrees. She wants to ask if he’d gotten a memory back, but there’s something in his eyes like distress, and she doesn’t. “But Hardison told me that people do when they care about other people.” 

“And you care about me?” He asks. It’s not mean or sarcastic, just kind of hollow. 

Parker thinks about the plant that she has at home, the one that Hardison had given her after they’d had to blow up the first office. The old one had been mostly dead because she’d never taken care of it. 

He’d told her, in regards to the second plant, that to increase the longevity of its lifespan she’d have to water it regularly and set it out in the sun, so it could bloom and be happy. 

She still doesn’t understand how a plant can be happy, exactly, but Eliot’s a human being, and maybe some of Hardison’s advice is more applicable here. 

“I care about you,” she confirms with a nod. Sophie had told her once that sharing with people how you feel about them is like feeding their souls. Assuming that his soul is what’s making him sad right now, and   
that food to souls is the same as water and sun to plants, she can only deduce that she’s helping keep Eliot alive. “I don’t want you to die.” 

He smiles at her, a little crookedly. “I aint gonna die.” 

“Okay,” she nods and swallows. “Are you gonna jump?” 

He opens his mouth to respond to her, but stops after a breath and shakes his head. “There’s something kinda wrong with you.” 

Call her crazy, but that’s the best thing Parker’s heard in weeks. 

\----------

“So,” Eliot clears his throat, “we actually landed the plane on a _highway_?” 

“Yup,” Parker nods happily, swinging her feet against the ledge overlooking the bay, where they’ve both been sitting for hours. 

“That seems...unlikely.” He mentions. 

“We do a lot of unlikely things,” she says seriously. 

Eliot has come to realize that while Parker’s a little bit insane – straight up, probably clinically, _whacked_ – in certain regards, she’s also the most honest person he’s ever met. 

“And this was _before_ we blew up the first set of offices in LA?” He’s always had a pretty good memory when it comes to timelines, and despite having a huge chunk of his life ripped out of his head, that   
doesn’t seem to have changed much. 

“Yeah,” she agrees. “Then Nate moved in above the bar. You said that was _very Catholic_ , which I don’t really get.” 

“Catholics have a thing for self-flagellation,” he tells her. “They’re big on guilt and regrets.” 

“Oh.” She looks comprehensive for a long moment. “I still don’t get it.” 

“No one really does,” he shrugs. 

“Okay...” she tilts her head like maybe he’s the one who’s kind of crazy, before shaking it a bit and moving on. “You beat up Sterling, did I mention that?” 

The Interpol bastard that Eliot remembers hating even though he can’t picture the guy’s face –he imagines it pointy and scrunched – had most definitely had coming whatever Eliot had dished out. 

“Good,” he grunts. 

“Yeah, it was cool,” she agrees with a grin. “But then we accidently helped him join Interpol because we had to save Nate’s ex-wife, and you had to give him the Faberge egg to keep him and Maggie alive.” 

“Huh,” Eliot considers her story. “Was this before or after Nate and Sophie were together?” 

Parker blinks at him several times, face completely blank. “Huh?” 

He wonders for a moment if he’d gotten it wrong. He knows what he’s seen between them so far, and he _knows_ there’s something more, too. In the same way that he’s been knowing-without-knowing so much lately. 

But the way the blonde thief is staring at him right now causes doubts to rise. 

He figures it’s a long shot, but maybe he just hadn’t been precise enough. Parker seems to understand things best when there’s no room in his words for misinterpretations. 

“Their romantic relationship,” he clarifies. “Did the thing with Sterling and...Maggie?” She nods absently, “happen before or after Nate and Sophie were romantically involved?”

“You don’t remember that, do you?” She looks at him worriedly. “Because I think getting wrong memories back is probably worse than the right ones staying hidden.” 

He wants to point out to her that his memories aren’t exactly _hiding_ , but decides after a moment of thought that it’s actually a pretty good metaphor. Then he responds to the rest of her statement. “I’m not remembering wrong,” he tells her. “I know what...” she’s biting her bottom lip and squinting at him with this overly intense look in her eyes, like she’s ready to panic and go get help if need be. “Maybe I just misread the signals.” 

She breathes out, obviously relieve. “Sophie tells me that I do that all the time.” She smirks at him. “You’re usually better at it.” 

“Hey, my brain’s broken,” he grunts, nudging her playfully with one shoulder. “What’s your excuse?” 

She laughs out loud at his words, and then he laughs, too. 

Call him crazy, but it’s the best thing he’s felt in weeks. 

\--

“Where’s Eliot?” Nate demands upon walking into the living room and seeing only Sophie and Hardison. 

“Don’t know,” the hacker says from behind one of his computers. “Him and Parker are AWOL.” 

Nate stares at him, but the younger man refuses to look away from his laptop’s screen. He turns instead towards Sophie. 

The grifter shrugs helplessly. “Hardison says they’re on the other side of town.” 

“No, the GPS tracker in Parker’s phone says _she’s_ on the other side of town.” He corrects, still not looking up. “But she hasn’t moved in a while, and I don’t have a feed on Eliot.” 

“But I think we can safely assume that if she’s not moving and Eliot’s not here, then the two of them are together,” Sophie’s got her feet pulled up under her and is thumbing through a magazine like she’s not   
concerned. 

“Seriously?” Nate has to ask. “We just chased the man across the country because he took off without warning, and we’re going to _assume_ he’s staying in town _now_?” 

“Look, man,” Hardison finally averts his gaze from the computer and finds Nate’s. “Parker took off late last night. Chances are she was followin’ Eliot somewhere.” 

“Even if you’re right,” Nate shakes his head, every possibility springing up at once, crowding his thoughts. “What if she dropped her phone? What if she’s hurt? What if she left her phone somewhere so she could   
follow Eliot without us following her?” 

“Why are you so paranoid?” Sophie asks with a tiny head tilt. 

Nate doesn’t think he needs to remind them again about chasing Eliot _across the country_. His bulging eyes probably say it for him, though. 

Sophie sighs and delicately sets her magazine aside. “Nate,” she starts, “I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but ever since Eliot lost his memory, he’s been a little...off.” 

“Well, yeah,” Nate explodes, thinking her comment goes far and beyond stating the obvious. 

“What she means, man,” Hardison speaks up, “is that he’s actin’ kinda crazy. And Parker’s an expert at crazy.” 

“She might,” Sophie adds, “be the only one who can really talk to him right now.” 

Nate feels marginally insulted by that. “I talked to him.” 

“We all have,” Sophie soothes. “And he trusts us, fine. But he’s also tense and unsure and...somewhat afraid around us. Those reactions are less prevalent with Parker. And Hardison.” 

“He knows,” Nate sighs. He rubs a hand over his face and sits down across from them. “He knows that you and I,” he gestures to Sophie, “betrayed him.” 

“He remembers?” Hardison perks up. 

“Not exactly.” Nate shrugs. “Says he just knows certain stuff. I’m not an expert in neurochemistry, but I don’t think what he has now are memories.” 

“Is that normal?” Sophie asks, more contemplating out loud than actually looking for an answer. “To remember without remembering?” 

“I don’t know,” Nate shrugs. 

“Y’know,” Hardison comments, sounding thoughtful. “The guy’s whole life has been about fighting and surviving and taking care of himself. Maybe his brain’s just doin’ _that_.” 

“What?” Sophie asks, “Taking care of itself?” 

“Maybe,” Nate considers it. “It makes sense, in a weird way.” 

Once, when Nate had been a teenager, he’d avoided an accident that would have surely resulted in his death because he’d known, just _known_ , to stop walking. He’d been at a crosswalk, and the light had been blinking in his favor. Yet he’d stood there, frozen at the curb, certain beyond all reason that if he were to move he would die. Less than a minute later a car had blown the red light and flown through the crosswalk, right where Nate would have been. 

Maybe it’s not the same thing – Eliot’s not-memories are probably the result of brain chemistry, not fate – but Nate can’t help but remember that day and think that Eliot’s in a constant state of something similar. 

“It’s like, extreme evolution,” Hardison says, breaking Nate out of his thoughts. “Self-preservation like, like _cavemen_ used to have, because Eliot’s life is, like what? A warzone half the time, right? He’s always fightin’ and shit. His brain’s just protectin’ him. Uber-instincts, I call it.” 

“That’s a very...” Sophie clears her throat. “Visionary concept.” 

“That’s one way to put it.” Nate mutters. 

Hardison glares at both of them. “It’ll go away when he gets his memory back.” 

“If he gets his memory back,” Nate corrects without thinking. 

The hacker’s expression falls and Sophie looks away. Nate sighs, “I didn’t mean...” he trails off, and doesn’t know how to finish. Because he _had_ meant, and they both know it. 

\----------

“We should get back,” Eliot suggests eventually. The sun’s been up for a while now, and even though he doesn’t want to leave Parker or this place, there’s something in him screaming about responsibilities and   
concern and guilt. 

“We should,” she agrees, but makes no move to stand up. “Eliot?” 

“Yeah?” He’s watching the sun shimmer across the water, reflecting off the snow, and thinking about Minnesota, and a girl he’d known there. 

“How come you talked to me for so long?” 

The hitter looks over at her. “Was I not supposed to?” He understands by now that Parker’s a little different – crazy and strange – but he’s not fooled into believing that she doesn’t understand things that go on around her. 

“I don’t know,” she shrugs. “I just...it’s like it’s normal again, kinda. You...it doesn’t feel like your memories are hiding.” 

“They are,” he sighs. He doesn’t know how to tell her that he feels safe with her. “But maybe it doesn’t matter so much when it’s just me an’ you.” 

“Oh,” she nods once but still looks pensive. “Okay.” 

It shouldn’t be the end of the conversation, but he’s got a broken brain and muddled emotions, and she’s...well, she’s her. Which Eliot is starting to realize is a description that lacks a finite definition. The conversation shouldn’t end there, and wouldn’t have if either of them were normal, but they’re not, and it does. 

“We should get back then,” she repeats his words. 

They stand up together and Eliot glances at one of the big buildings behind them. There’s a metal door with a shamrock painted on it in black, stretching from frame to frame, tall enough that he can see it from here now that it’s light outside. He taps her elbow and points to it when he’s got her attention. “Does it count as good luck if it’s not the right color?” 

She looks at what he’s looking at and stares intensely. “Maybe only half,” she decides after a beat. 

“Half,” he nods. “Half good luck. Half...” 

“Bad luck,” she fills in. “Split odds. Like flipping a coin.” 

“Yeah,” he sighs as they start their trek back across town, thinking over her words. “Split odds sounds about right.” 

TBC...


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Your memory is a monster; you forget—it doesn't. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you—and summons them to your recall with will of its own.” – John Irving_

It’s been a week since Eliot’s been home now, and things are still different, but better than they had been yesterday. 

They haven’t taken a case, despite Eliot’s continuing and growing irritation. The older man says he wants to _fight, dammit. Just give me something to fight_. Hardison orders a punching bag off the internet and pays extra for overnight delivery. It helps a little with Eliot’s frustration, and the sound of the hitter using it every night keeps Nate awake and severely irritated. It’s a win-win. 

Eliot hasn’t made any attempt to locate his own home, either, even though Hardison’s offered more than once to try and find it via the internet. He seems very content sleeping on Nate’s couch. 

Parker, Sophie, and Hardison have been there more often than not lately, too. Keeping an eye on Eliot, monitoring his memory and other random stuff that his brain might be doing; also, they’ve all kind of unanimously decided that Nate and Eliot in an apartment alone together for too long would probably lead to bodily harm for one of them, and it’s not really a tossup as to who. 

Eliot trusts Nate just fine, Hardison knows, but even before this whole thing with Eliot’s brain, the mastermind and the hitter had never done well together for extended periods of time. Eliot gets pissed off, Nate talks too much, they start arguing about plans and fights, and since they’re both natural leaders, everything tends to just go to crap from there. 

So, as much as Hardison wouldn’t mind seeing Eliot confine Nate to a wheelchair, he and the others make an active effort to keep the apartment well populated: a house full of buffers. 

The thing is, this whole situation, it just feels like a stopgap. They’re not moving forward, and they’re not going back. They spend every day just letting situations play themselves out, none of them making an active effort to _change_ anything. 

Eliot cooks, Nate reads, Sophie watches movies, Parker tests new rigs, Hardison taps away on his computer, and nothing moves. Eliot doesn’t talk about not remembering, although Hardison suspects that Parker’s been telling him stories about their lives together before the accident. Nate won’t take on a new client, Sophie doesn’t audition for plays anymore, Parker doesn’t talk about robbing banks, and Hardison...Hardison watches all of them do nothing, and can’t help but follow along. 

They’re stuck in the middle; Eliot’s accident had paused their lives right in between level three and level four, and no one knows how to start playing again. 

\--

Eliot may not remember the past five years of his life, he may be confused and at the mercy of his not-memories, he may depend on Parker for insight into the life he seems to have now, and he may not understand how he’d ended up here, with these people, but he _does_ remember himself. 

He’d been a fully developed human being five years ago – different, maybe, than the person these people know, but not hesitant about anything – and he _knows_ what kind of life works best for him. 

Sitting around in someone else’s apartment all day waiting for memories to come back, depending on doctors and cues, walking on eggshells around people he doesn’t really know... this isn’t the life he needs. 

So, a little more the week after they get back from the west coast, he picks up his jacket and turns towards the two others that are in the apartment with him. 

“I’m going out.” He states. 

Hardison and Nate both look up from what they’d been doing – reading and playing a video game respectively. 

“Uh, where?” The younger man asks, pausing his game and scratching at the back of his head. 

“Out,” Eliot repeats. He’s not trying to be difficult – these people have been taking care of him, letting him exist in their world even though he doesn’t remember, and he’s grateful for that – but he’s still a private person. He knows, thanks to things they’ve said and the way they treat him, that that hadn’t changed in the five years he’s missing. 

“Are you planning on coming back?” Nate asks with a straight face, trying to play his question off as casual. 

The older man, the leader of them, is still acting differently around him, in some regards. He’ll bicker with Eliot about food, and television shows, and drinking his beer; he’s gotten more comfortable around him as a whole, but still there’s this sense that he’s laying low. 

Eliot both appreciates it – he’d never taken too well to authority – and hates it, because his brain _knows_ that this isn’t right, and something in him is craving normality. He’s just not sure what normality   
entails, because this man won’t show it to him. None of them will, really – except for Parker, and he needs more than that. 

“Yeah,” he grunts, shrugging his leather jacket over his shoulders. “I’m planning on coming back.” 

“Do you want...” the older man clears his throat, shares a look with Hardison, and says, “one of us to come with you?” 

Eliot wants to scoff at the offer, but at the same time he feels grateful for it. They care about him. He can see that – hell, he can _feel_ that – but he’s still _him_ , and he’s been working and living solo for a long time. 

“Nah,” he shakes his head, attempting casual. 

“Okay...” Nate trails off, unsure and wanting to say something more. But he can’t, because he’s not being him right now. 

Eliot grinds his teeth and looks at the younger man. He doesn’t know what to say. He never knows what to say. “Tell Parker I’ll make dinner tomorrow night if she buys the chicken.” 

Hardison smiles a little, albeit tightly, “She’ll want to steal it.” 

Eliot considers this for a moment. “Let her.” He shrugs once, and then leaves the apartment. 

The sky outside is a celestial light show of stars and a too bright, almost-full moon. It’s pretty, he thinks, and amazingly vivid this deep into the heart of the city, but the illumination of it is going to be a hindrance to what he’s about to do. 

\--

Eliot’s been to Boston before. _Before_ his team had taken up residence here and _before_ the five years he doesn’t have any more. 

He’d worked a couple jobs in and around the city, had even lived here for a few beats back in his early twenties. It had never really been his scene, but it has its perks. He understands why he would have agreed to form something long lasting here. 

Because he’s so familiar with this place it doesn’t take him long to stumble into the bad part of town. Gangs, guns, violence, hookers, drugs, and death; every major city has a block like this, and Eliot’s visited more than his fair share over the years. 

He feels a sense of calmness trickle down his spine. He’s alert and ready. He hears footsteps and quiet muttering, he feels danger like it’s an entity; he uses the light of the moon to guide his eyes as he maps escapes, weapons, and people. 

He’d told them, he’d _told_ them, dammit, that he needs to fight. But Nate had made lame excuses about head wounds and full strength, Hardison had said there were no clients right now anyway, and so on and so on. But he’d _told_ them. 

It’s not a job, it’s not a hobby – he needs to fight to stay in control, to not go insane. If they want him in their lives, if he wants to be in theirs, then he _needs_ to do this. 

He turns down an alleyway near an industrialized building that’s long been shut down. Three men follow him. He’s crept up on someone else’s territory – he’d been hoping for that. 

“Yo,” one of them shouts, and the hitter turns around. “Y’lookin’ for trouble, bitch?” 

Three men, all taller than him, but none of them as built. They all have guns, and the one on the far right has at least some rudimentary martial arts training – it’s a very distinctive stance. He makes a mental note to fight that guy last, always a fan of savoring the small pleasures. 

“Maybe,” he answers the one in the middle evenly, cocking his head to the side and grinning wide, a caricature of false bravado. “Ya callin’ yourself trouble?” He pauses for affect. “Bitch?” 

“Oh,” the one guys laughs loudly, moving his hand towards the gun tucked into his jeans. “Tough guy, huh?” 

Eliot taunts them more, until they get too close. Thugs are easy. He’d been right, though. The one guy had been trained in a form of krav maga specific to a certain region of the Middle East, and it’s been a long while since Eliot’s fought someone who knows any of those methods. His shoulder’s throbbing from an impressively high kick, but the wannabe badass gangsters are out for the count, and by the time they wake up and heal from the injuries Eliot had given them they might think about getting into a new line of work. 

He feels accomplished, but in no way sated. 

He wipes his hands on his jeans, pockets a knife he’d stolen off the krav maga guy, and goes looking for round two. 

\--

His uncle Jack had taught him about the beauty of making up stories. Sitting around a campfire with his uncles and his cousin, the man would weave tales of impossibility and triumph, of good overthrowing evil, of rescuing the princess and freeing the kingdom’s doomed protectors. 

Maybe that’s where his need to do good had come from, he thinks as he walks the dangerous city streets. Maybe his uncle Jack had ingrained that in him young enough, before he’d really had a personality or ideals of his own, that he’d always carried it with him. When Nate and the others had come along he’d seen the chance to fulfill a childhood fantasy. 

He knows it’s not as simple as that – nothing ever is – but it’s a nice thought. A nice, simple thought that makes him smile as he turns a corner, hears a whisper, and stands at attention. 

They’re coming for him. They know he doesn’t belong here. Maybe they’d even heard the first fight, seen the destruction he’d caused. Maybe they want to prove themselves amongst their rivals; maybe they’re just itching for violence, too. 

Eliot doesn’t much care about their motives; he’s never been big on the psychology behind actions. He’s just glad they’re ignorant enough to think that they might stand a chance in hell against him.

\--

“Where’s Eliot?” It seems everyone’s been asking that question lately, Sophie muses as she walks into Nate’s apartment the next morning, worn from another night of not sleeping as well as she’s used to. 

He’s like a sick child amongst them. It’s the first question to be answered as the day begins, the most important concern. _Where’s Eliot? Is he alright? Are you taking care of him?_ Sophie doesn’t know if the hitter appreciates their concern or feels smothered by it. She doesn’t know if he wants to stay or go, if he’s happy here, or what’s happening inside his brain. 

None of them know, to be fair, but Sophie’s the one least used to that. It’s her job, her _life_ , to know what’s going on inside other people’s heads and hearts. With Eliot it has always been a struggle, at times a shot in the dark. 

But this is different, so very different, to the uncertainty she’s used to feeling with their hitter. Before, before the accident and its repercussions, she’d always had a baseline. Even when she was taking a shot in the dark with his emotions she’d be able to predict his outwards behavior. Eliot’s a simple man, with simple reactions to even the most extreme circumstances. It’s what makes him so very good at his job; it what makes him a superb teammate and a...a great friend. 

Because that’s what they are, or what they’d been, at least, before this. Friends. Teammates. Family. Only now everything has changed and all she’s doing is taking guesses and praying that she’s right, praying that his baseline remains consistent in this mess of unknown variables. 

Physical injury she could have dealt with – broken bones or torn flesh. With Eliot, those are just other constants. His not-remembering is so very different, though, and she’s light-years out of her comfort zone. 

“He went out last night.” Hardison tells her after she sets her coat down. “We don’t know...we don’t know.” He shrugs helplessly, and even from across the room Sophie can see the muscles in his jaw tighten. 

“Right, then,” she takes a deep breath, trying to forego an overly dramatic, unnecessary response. “Did he say when he was coming back?”

“He said he _was_ ,” Nate’s voice answers her, and Sophie turns then towards the kitchen. 

“Cocktail hour already?” She crosses her arms disapprovingly and stares pointedly at the drink in his hand. “That doesn’t seem like a helpful solution to this problem.” 

“It’s not a problem,” Nate shrugs, but he’s tense, and not believing his own words. “Eliot’s a grown man. If he wants to go out then who are we to stop him?” 

“He’s a grown man with _brain damage_ ,” Sophie says slowly.

“I seem to recall you being fairly laid back about this matter a week or so ago,” Nate crosses his own arms, making sure to keep the tumbler close to his lips. 

“When we knew he was with Parker,” Sophie counters. “She’s not with him now, I take it?” 

“No,” Hardison pipes up again. 

“There,” Sophie waves a hand. “Not the same thing.” 

“If we try to control him right now, we’re going to lose him again.” Nate grits out. “I don’t like it any more than you do, but we aren’t his keepers. Five years ago Eliot had no idea who we were. We can’t expect him to just-”

“Five years ago,” Sophie interrupts, “Eliot’s life was in a constant state of danger.” 

“And it’s not now?” Hardison balks, but the other two ignore him. 

“That’s the life he knows,” Nate presses. “We can’t expect him to just accept the fact that he’s safe now.” 

“No,” Sophie agrees vehemently. “We have to _show_ him. By not letting him do things like disappear in the middle of the night for, for...god knows what.” 

“ _Let_ him?” Nate repeats, hysterical edge to his tone. “Since when do we _let_ Eliot do anything? And what exactly do you think would happen if we tried to not _let_ him do something? It’s _Eliot_ , alright?” 

“He wouldn’t hurt us, if that’s what you’re implying,” Sophie reels back. “He may not recall specifics, but he knows he trusts us. Bloody hell, he _told_ you that.” 

“Yeah,” Nate agrees angrily, “And I’d like for him to _keep_ trusting us long enough for us to fix this. If we start trying to control him...” 

“Fix this?” Sophie echoes when Nate trails off. “ _Fix_ this? The man has brain damage caused by serious injury. This isn’t...a con, or a game. There’s literally nothing we can do to, to-”

“The doctor said,” Nate interrupts her, “That we can remind him of things, keep him surrounded with-”

“Oh, and the bloody doctor knows everything, does he?” Sophie snaps. “He couldn’t tell us what’s wrong with him. Couldn’t tell us _anything_ helpful or-”

“I know!” Nate bellows. The force of his scream and the jerk of his body causes some of the amber liquid in his glass to spill over the side, but he doesn’t seem to notice. “Don’t you think I _know_ what this...” 

Sophie is reminded, quite brutally in that moment, how many parallels Nate must be drawing between this situation and the one he’d been in so many years ago with his son. “I...I’m sorry.” Though apologizing isn’t in her nature, she thinks this moment deserves one. “I didn’t think.” 

“Yeah,” Nate breathes out deeply and runs a hand over his face. “I...”

“Guys,” Hardison’s hesitant voice pulls them back from the depths of their fight, the emotions that it had brought up. Sophie’s embarrassed to admit that she’d forgotten the younger man had been in the room. 

“Uh, Parker’s on her way over now.” 

“What? Oh,” Nate shakes his head, forcibly pulls himself out of old emotions, and moves towards the kitchen table to pour himself more liquor. “Good.” 

“Do you think...do you wanna talk, y’know, about how to handle this whole, the Eliot situation?” He’s speaking hesitantly, like he doesn’t know what comment might set either of them off again. 

Sophie sighs tiredly. “No.” She decides, ignoring the looks it gets her. “I think, for now, we should do this Nate’s way.” 

“And what, what way exactly,” the hacker scratches the back of his head, “is that? ‘Cause I don’t think there was a plan, so much, in all’a that.” He gestures widely, encompassing with his hands the fight he’d just witnessed. 

“A plan,” Nate snorts, downing a fistful of Jameson and shaking his head. “Yeah. Right.” There’s irony and anger in his tone, and neither the hacker nor the grifter know what to do with it. 

\--

“You didn’t expect him to stay cooped up in the apartment, did you?” Parker asks with an innocent head tilt when the others tell her what’s going on. “He probably would have done this sooner if Hardison hadn’t gotten him that punching bag.” 

The hacker grins proudly, and Sophie asks, “You don’t know where he is, do you?” 

She shrugs, eyes scanning over Eliot’s list of things he would need to make dinner tonight. “You think Eliot would mind if I bought a cake?”

“Parker,” Nate says in his sternest voice. “Do you know where Eliot is?” 

All three of them are looking at her when she glances up again. “Chocolate cake,” she specifies, “With blue sprinkles, ‘cause Eliot got mad the last time I got pink ones.” 

“ _Parker_ ,” Sophie tries, exasperated and tired. 

“I don’t know where he is,” she shrugs again. “Why would I?” 

“You two have been talkin’ a lot lately, mamma,” Hardison says carefully. “We just thought... _they_ just thought, maybe...” 

“Eliot likes talking to me because I don’t care that his memories are hiding,” she explains this to them the best she can, knowing that sometimes they’re a little bit slow on the uptake. “If they never come back, then these new ones are going to be the only ones that matter, anyway.” 

Nate’s face is sort of scrunched up and Sophie’s looks frozen. Parker glances at Hardison and asks, “What?” 

“Nothin’,” he shakes his head, smiling wide and genuine. “I think you just reminded us of somethin’, is all.”

\--

It’d late-afternoon by the time Eliot’s on his way back to Nate’s apartment. The sun’s shining, despite the frigid air, and there’s not a cloud in the sky. He takes a deep breath and savors the burn of it in his lungs. 

He feels happy, free, and _content_ , for the first time since he’d woken up in that hospital bed so many weeks ago. He’s finally feels okay with the predicament he’s in and the people’s he’s in it with. 

He may not remember them, sure, but there’s enough truth in his instincts that he thinks that’s probably okay. He doesn’t remember his life with them, but those are just memories. He’s alive, they’re alive, and they can always make new memories. 

For the first time since he’d left Aimee he’s got people that he wants to go home to, and that _want_ him to come home. 

Compared to all that he’s lost in his life before this, maybe five years isn’t so bad after all. 

TBC...


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.”  
>  ― Marcel Proust_

Chapter 4

 

Hardison had just dropped the oregano, cinnamon, and garlic cloves on the kitchen table when he hears Sophie’s ragged gasp and Nate’s, “What the fuck?” 

He exits the kitchen, Parker in tow, as fast as he can. The sight that greets him in the living room is both unexpected and far too familiar. 

Eliot’s face is a mess of discoloration and tiny trickles of blood. It’s also sporting a pretty big grin, Hardison notes, when his shock lets him see past the injuries. 

“What happened to you face, sparky?” Parker demands, though she doesn’t sound angry or concerned, really. Just neutrally curious. 

“What happened to yours?” He counters with a mock kind of scowl. 

It causes Parker to smile despite herself. “I stole groceries,” she says, moving right past what, Hardison has to assume he’s not the only one thinking, is the biggest issue on the table. “And I got stuff for you to make a cake.” 

“I don’t bake, Parker.” He scowls again, a little for real this time. 

“Oh,” her forehead crinkles. “You remember that?” 

“I...” he opens and closes his mouth a few times. “ _What_?” 

“Just checking,” she shrugs, and then hightails it to the kitchen. 

Eliot shakes his head and rolls his eyes. He glances over at Hardison and mutters, “That’s twenty pounds ’a crazy in a five pound bag,” before following the blonde into the other room. 

His words, despite the light, even upbeat, tone they’re delivered in, feel like a punch in the gut for the younger man. “Yeah,” he answers, even though Eliot’s already gone. “I know.” 

\--

“Your face didn’t look like that when you left last night,” Sophie and Nate spare almost no time following the hitter into the kitchen. 

“And you weren’t quite this drunk when I left last night,” Eliot shrugs, noting the man’s bleary eyes and mildly swaying stance. “Y’do that a lot?” 

“Only when my team goes off and does something stupid,” the older man snaps. 

Eliot turns around and faces the man fully; crossing his arms over his chest and taking deep, even breaths. He’s not really angry – more curious than anything else, as to where this might go – but he wants to make   
sure he stays that way. 

“I told you,” he says simply, noting absently that while Sophie’s standing behind Nate on one side of the table, Hardison and Parker are frozen on his side of the kitchen. “That I needed to fight. Over and over again, I said it.” 

“That’s true,” Parker pipes up. 

“Then you should have waited,” Nate states. 

“For what?” Eliot snorts. “It’s been three weeks since we got back here, over a month since I woke up. Y’don’t get it, man. I told you what I needed, but ya didn’t listen. So, I went out and got it on my own.” 

“You don’t _need_ to fight to-”

Eliot slams a fist down on the table, stopping the other man cold and making more than one of the others flinch. “Don’t ever tell me what I need.” He growls deep in his throat. “I lost five years’a my life, not thirty. I know _exactly_ what I need.” 

Nate swallows thickly and takes a step back then, as if bowing out of the argument. There’s a long, painfully awkward silence that seems to stretch on forever. The tension between Nate and Eliot is palpable, and the hitter senses the other’s uncertainty. He’d like to help them out, like to lighten the mood or at least break the tension, but he needs to know what Nate is going to do next. 

Eventually, when the silence is weighing heavy on them all, the man in charge clears his throat and asks, “Are you hurt?”

Eliot half-smiles, trying to take some of the pressure away, “I’ll be fine.” 

A finger pokes his kidney then, and he flinches away from it instinctively. “What the hell?” He turns to Parker, who’s sporting a curious expression. 

“Did that hurt?” She asks. 

“No,” he grunts. 

“Good,” she grins before reaching forward and poking his shoulder. It’s the same shoulder that he’d dislocated once in Pakistan, and that had always been a problem spot for him since then, and he wonders for a   
heartbeat if she knows about that. “Does that hurt?”

It does, but just a tiny bit, and he’s able to hide his reaction without trying. “No,” he says in the driest tone he can muster up. 

“Groovy.” She bounces a little on the balls of her feet. “So, if you’re not hurt, and Nate’s not mad anymore...can you cook dinner now?” 

\--

“Forget your troubles, c’mon get happy,” Eliot lets the melody of the song drift away from him as he chops up carrots for the salad, “Better chase all your cares away. Shout halleluiah, c’mon get happy, get ready for the judgment day.” 

He’s whistling by the time he’s got the salad all prepared and turns to check on the grilling chicken. It’s getting just the right shade of golden brown, and when he shuts the oven door, he reaches up and clicks off the stove. 

“Hey,” Parker’s voice is unexpected and too loud behind him. 

He jumps back and throws an arm up. Not an attack, but an instinctual _don’t hurt me_. He spins around, his ponytail flopping underneath the bandanna and...

_“I startled you.” She says it like she’s surprised, like she hadn’t thought this a possible notion._

_“You’re a cat burglar, that’s what you do.” He growls at her, angry and irritated, hiding something._

_“Yeah, I’ve been a cat burglar since I was ten years old,” she snaps back at him, unafraid of his anger._

_“Don’t...really?” He’s distracted by her admission._

_“Well, maybe nine,” she tosses out, like it means nothing. “But this is the first time I’ve startled you.”_

_“He’s nervous, Parker,” Sophie says over the comms._

_“I’m not nervous.” He grits out._

_“I thought you said you could sing.” The cat burglar in question demands._

_“I can sing,” he bites. “I just, I didn’t realize there was going to be this many people.” He admits, and he’s not afraid of admitting it, not to Parker, or to the others via the comms. He should be. He shouldn’t want  
them to know...anything. But he does. _

_She gasps a little, mouth hanging open for a beat. “You are nervous.”_

“Eliot!” There’s a sharp tug the collar of his shirt and pinch to his side. He lashes out, but whoever’s there ducks away. “Eliot, it’s me.” 

The hitter shakes his head sharply, and bit by bit his surroundings come back to him. He’s still standing, which is somewhat surprising. He’s leaning against the kitchen counter, hands curled tight around the edge, but he’s on his own two feet. Parker’s in front of him, no doubt has been for however long. 

“Did I hurt you?” He demands as soon as he remembers enough to realize that it’s a possibility. 

She quickly shakes her head. “No.” 

He scans her face, both for bruises and lies, and finds no trace of either. He relaxes a little. “What happened?” He unclenches his hands and moves to stand on his own. He wobbles a little bit, and Parker hovers, but after a beat everything feels more or less okay again. 

Still, when the thief leads him over to a chair at the table and prompts him to sit down, he doesn’t fight it. She sits next to him and won’t stop staring. “I don’t know.” She answers. “I came up behind you and you jumped. Then your eyes got all glazed and you backed up against the counter. When I went to poke you, you tried to hit me, but I kinda expected that, since you’re Eliot and everything, so I ducked. Then you blinked a bunch of times and now we’re talking.” 

He nods a few times, taking even breaths and trying to piece together everything that his brain had just given him. “A flashback,” he has enough presence of mind to give it a name for Parker, before she starts to panic. “I think I just...had a flashback.” 

“You remembered a memory?” Her face lights up. 

Eliot, still a little short of breath and shaky, nods once. “Yeah. Yeah, I did.” 

\--

“What did you remember?” Nate demands the second Parker’s done filling them in. Hardison stands close behind the thief, still sitting at the table next to Eliot, and puts a hand on her shoulder. 

“A con, I think.” The hitter shakes his head. “A job we had in...Nashville, maybe. Or Memphis.” 

“Memphis,” Hardison says without thinking, but then Nate glares at him, hard. He wants Eliot to remember without prompts, and Hardison does, too. He’d just gotten excited. He nods at Nate, telling him that he   
understands, and then waits. 

“There was a girl.” His face is scrunched up, causing the bruises and scrapes to morph at weird angles. “We...” he trails off and shakes his head. “Y’know. And, and I sang. I _sang_.” He turns towards Nate   
then, looking almost angry. “How’d you know I could sing?” 

Nate smiles, and even though it’s sad around the edges, Hardison is glad to see it. “You told me.” 

“Why?” He breathes, just not understanding. 

“It was the only way to get that girl what she deserved.” Sophie answers for him, and she’s smiling, too. 

“The money, the song.” Eliot lists, and then says sharply, “Kaye Lynn. That was her name, right? The girl?” 

It takes a beat, but eventually Nate nods. 

“Kirkwood.” The hitter goes on, and it sounds like a random plucking of facts. Hardison’s gut twinges a little for the chaos that must be happening in Eliot’s brain. “He...he was the bad guy, and we took him down,   
and Kaye Lynn...left.” 

“She’s out in Nashville now,” Hardison says without thinking again. This time nobody glares at him. No one knows what had happened between Eliot and Kaye Lynn at the end of that con. No one except Kaye Lynn herself, and Eliot, if he really had just gotten that memory back. 

“And you never told him about that, right?” Sophie asks Parker then, voice suddenly too low, too anxious. “You never told him-”

“She never told me about it,” Eliot answers, a tad harshly. “Even if she had, I...I remember.” 

“And I didn’t,” Parker adds unnecessarily. 

“So you...you’re remembering.” Nate bites his lip hard. “That’s...that’s good.” 

“Yeah.” Eliot agrees, but his voice is hollow. “Yeah, that’s...” he blinks a few times and then looks around, as if just then realizing that they’re all in the room with him. “I should, uh, finish cooking.” 

“Right.” Nate nods and takes a step back. There’s an awkward pause. 

Eliot finally stands up, smiling tightly. “The chicken’s gonna burn.” 

\--

“Can I lick the spoon?” Parker asks with a tiny, hopeful grin. 

Eliot hands it over without hesitation and dumps the batter into the pre-greased pan. He doesn’t bake, normally, but Parker had been insistent about getting a cake and Eliot hadn’t minded the excuse to stay in the   
kitchen a bit longer. 

“It’s good.” Parker says in between licks. 

“I know _how_ to bake,” Eliot gripes, “I just don’t _like_ to.” 

“No, that you’re remembering,” she says. “That’s good.” 

“Yeah,” he agrees, though it sounds empty to his own ears. “It’s good.” 

“I think you’re lying.” She tilts her head curiously, the chocolate batter on the spoon mostly gone. 

“I don’t know,” he admits with a shrug. He’s okay with admitting things to these people, the memory he’d gotten back had proved that. He just still doesn’t understand _why_. “Maybe.” 

She looks at him with a fair amount of curiosity before tossing the now clean spoon into the sink behind her. She puts a hand on his shoulder and makes a face that’s probably supposed to be sympathetic. “Broken   
brains are complicated.” 

\--  
\--

Eliot, truth be told, isn’t the only one who’s getting a little bit itchy. Nate seems content enough to move things along at the pace he’s deemed appropriate, and he and Sophie are preoccupied daily with arguing over the best way to ‘deal’ with Eliot. Parker seems fine to come in and out, talk to Eliot, root around the kitchen, and repel off the roof when the urge strikes her. Hardison has no doubt that she’s breaking into buildings and planning heists in her down time, but as far as he can see she has no overwhelming desire to hop back onto that bike of crime. 

Hardison, on the other hand, is going a little stir crazy. 

There’s only so much he can do from his computer without a target or a goal, and while hacking into the White House’s emails has taught him more than he wanted to know about the obesity epidemic in America and the ongoing struggles with Libya, he’s getting restless. 

He wants to _do_ something other than wait around and hope Eliot gets better. Not that he’s upset with the man for the injuries he’s suffered – they are, after all, Hardison’s fault– and if Eliot were bed-bound or still unconscious, he certainly wouldn’t be thinking like this. 

But Eliot’s not bed-bound, unconscious, or hurt in any physical way. He is, in fact, more eager to get back into the field than Hardison is.

Which is the thinking that leads to a conversation a few days after Eliot gets the memory of the Memphis job back. 

“So, uh, I have this buddy,” he starts, sitting down on the couch next to Eliot and picking up one of the beers and fiddling with the top. “This online buddy who, uh, asked me to help him out with this, uh, thing.” 

Eliot turns his attention away from the hockey game – and at least that hasn’t changed – on TV, and faces him fully. 

Hardison clears his throat and continues. “There’s this company downtown, Silicorp?” He doesn’t wait to see if Eliot recognizes the name, because, obviously, he won’t. “It’s just a small little operation but, well, they’re, uh, they’ve taken to hacking into people’s personal computers and stealing...well, stuff.” He decides to spare the technical jargon, just this once. “Programming stuff, and it’s all backed up, obviously, because who doesn’t...but the issue becomes a he said-she said kinda thing, and, well...” 

“Are you asking me for a favor?” Eliot demands, and he seems genuinely lost. Hardison really needs to work on his communication skills when it comes to him. 

“Y’know, I guess...I wanted to see the inside of their operations, see if I could maybe, y’know, put a fork in there somewhere.” He pauses. “And by fork, I mean highly malicious virus, but, uh, the only way I can do that is to see their base operating system. Like, _see_ it, in person. And they have some pretty tight security, and, well, I was thinking...” 

Eliot shakes his head, and Hardison shuts up at once. God, had this been a stupid idea? Is Eliot going to go talk to Nate? Is he going to call Parker or Sophie? What will the others think about his attempts to...

“Whatchya doin’?” Eliot sits up straighter on the couch, swallows the last of his beer and reaches forward until he’s got his shoes in his hands. All of this distracts Hardison’s internal ramblings. 

“You said downtown, right?” The hitter asks, and when Hardison nods dumbly he glances at his watch. “Most businesses shut down around nine, at the latest. Everyone should be gone by ten. I figure we could do a sweep of the place, and then you can cut out the security feeds.” He pauses. “Right?” 

“Yeah, of course.” Hardison nods, still feeling a little stupid for how fast this is moving. He’d been expecting at least some mild form of protest. 

“I’ll take out the guards, you can do your thing,” he shrugs. “Easy in and out, right?” 

“Yeah.” He nods again. 

“How many floors?” The hitter questions, standing up once his shoes are on and looking around for his jacket. 

“Two,” Hardison says, “Like I said, it’s just a small operation.” 

“Well, small operations get big if no one stops them.” Eliot says. 

Hardison snorts. “Aint that the truth.”

“You sure your friend’s legit, right?” He asks sharply when Hardison finally follows his lead and gets up off the couch. “No chance this is a setup?” 

“No way, man,” the hacker shakes his head. “I’ll fill you in on all the details in the van. Might be a bit of geek speak in it, though.” 

Eliot smiles, genuine happiness in his tone when he says, “I’ll deal.” 

\--

It’s not exactly the most complicated game he’s ever been a part of, Eliot thinks as he’s taking out the last of seven security guards – two of which weren’t scheduled to be here tonight – but it feels nice to be doing _something_ at least a little bit more complicated than busting heads. 

He finds Hardison in the main office when he’s beyond positive that the threats in the building are all neutralized. The hacker is bent over a keyboard, seemingly completely oblivious to the world around him. He even jumps when Eliot shuts the door. 

“How do you manage to stay alive during cons?” He asks sardonically, sitting down in a chair across from where the other man is. “Your observational skills are for shit.” 

“Well, that’s why we got you, aint it?” He grumbles, going back to the large computer after a beat. 

Eliot shrugs. “Yeah, I guess it is.” 

He waits exactly seventeen minutes for Hardison to stop clicking. When the taller man shouts triumphantly and throws a fist into the air, Eliot grins. “Did we win, then?” 

“Fuck yeah we just won,” Hardison spins around in the swivel chair, still doing some ridiculous parody of a dance. “We just swam an ocean _and_ climbed a mountain. We planted our flag in these sons a bitches _asses_ , and they won’t even _know_ it until they’re high and dry, cryin’ for their mommas. Whew.” 

Eliot laughs outright at Hardison’s blatant trash talking. It’s usually a habit he finds distasteful, but in this man – maybe because of his age, his criminal specialty, or his relationship to him – Eliot just thinks it’s kind of endearing. 

The hacker stops what he’s doing – still spinning in circles – and looks at Eliot. “Think that’s the first time I’ve heard that in a month.” 

The hitter shrugs a little, smile still playing over his features. He’s not stupid enough to question what it is the younger man’s talking about, but he can’t help but mention that, “I’ve never been a very upbeat guy.”

“Nah,” he agrees easily enough, “But you have your moments.” 

Eliot thinks he remembers something then, a brief flash of...a coal mine, and something in his hand; a bomb maybe. But he shakes it away, knowing that he’ll have plenty of time to suss out the details of it later. 

He’s been getting chunks and fragments of memories back ever since that flash of the Memphis job with Parker, and every time it happens it gets easier and easier to deal with. He hasn’t been knocked off his feet with the weight of it in days. He’s even gotten to the point where he can file them away, his memory fragments, and go back to them later, analyzing critically everything that his mind is willing to give him and even finding more sometimes, seeing a whole story. 

Right now, as much as he’d like to know why holding a bomb in a coal mine had made him laugh out loud at Hardison, he’s on something akin to a job, and distraction, no matter how safe they are or how secure he’s made this building, is not a good idea. 

“Y’ready to take off?” Eliot stretches his arms above his head, grimacing when something in his back cracks just right. “I could use a beer.” 

TBC...


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.  
>  Maya Angelou_
> 
> The Sophie Chapter

Chapter 5

 

He’s been avoiding Sophie. 

It takes him a long time to realize this and a beat longer than that to admit it to himself, but it’s the truth. 

There are four of them, four members of his team that he has to deal with now that he’s decided, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to stay put. Parker’s the easiest; the one he trusts instinctively the most. She reminds him nothing of the big sister he’d actually had, but a lot of the little sister he hadn’t. She’s crazy and honest and _smart_ when you get past all of that, and he trusts her; with his emotions and with his physical wellbeing. She’s professional, she’s too used to danger, and she trusts him, maybe more than anyone else. And that means something. 

Hardison is a different kind of trust, but trust all the same. Eliot wouldn’t put his life in Hardison’s hands, at least not during a fight, but he’s good at the job he does behind the scenes, and just being here is showing him how important that is. Hardison’s never abandoned him or betrayed the team, and that means something, too. 

Nate’s harder than those two – harder than Sophie, maybe, but Eliot hasn’t tried with her yet so he doesn’t know for sure – but there’s something there with him. He remembers a little on his own about Nate’s past – the drinking and their fights about it – and Parker fills him in on the rest. 

He has no logical reason to trust Nate; or hadn’t, at least, when they’d first started this team, but something had made him stay - maybe Parker and Hardison, maybe Sophie, maybe his own need for penance, he doesn’t know now and maybe he never will. But he’d stayed, and Nate had shown him time and time again that he _can_ lead this team, and he _can_ keep them safe. Eliot trusts the other man, enough that taking cues from him is an instinct, even if he’s not doing it right _now_. 

He knows what both of them had done, why he’d felt that sting of betrayal when he’d first gotten back to them. Sophie had run a con on them to get the second David statue, and Nate had given himself up to protect them from Sterling. They’d both run games on their own crew; and while that thought alone is enough to make a part of Eliot want to hightail it away from them, he knows logically that Nate’s betrayal had been worse. 

And yet he’s found it easier to talk to Nate. Found it easier to accept him back into his fragmented life. Yet, for whatever reason, he’s been avoiding Sophie. Pushing her, bit by bit, out of this new existence he’s trying to build. He can see it in her eyes that she notices, and he can see, too, that it’s hurting her. 

He doesn’t want that; he hates that his broken brain is breaking her heart. 

So he takes a deep breath one day, when it’s just her and him in Nate’s apartment together, and walks over to the chair she’s curled up on, reading. He lets his hand drift over her shoulder as he walks by and, when he’s got her attention, he takes a seat on the end of the couch nearest to her. 

“How long ya think it’s gonna rain?” He starts, because he can’t think of a better way to do it than that.

\--

Sophie’s surprised, to say the least, when Eliot starts talking to her about the weather. It’s been an uphill struggle, ever since he’s gotten out of the hospital, to even get him to stay in the same room with her, never mind alone, without any of the others around. She’s been expecting, since Nate, Hardison, and Parker had left earlier that afternoon, for Eliot to take leave, too. 

It hurts, she has to admit, that he seems to be connecting with the others more than he’s connecting with her. If she were a stronger woman she might say that it doesn’t matter who he’s beginning to trust again, or remember, as long as he is; but she’s a thief, she’s very selfish, and it _does_ matter. 

He’ll spend hours on end chatting with Parker, disappear with Hardison and come back grinning like a fool, he’ll debate and strategize with Nate and...and that’s the kicker, really, because at least she’s being _herself_. Nate’s still lying low, letting Eliot set the pace of this new relationship. She’d opted to take a page out of Parker’s book instead – god help her judgment – and hasn’t tried to be anything she’s not. 

What really hurts is that she’s the one who’d _told_ Nate to dial back his authoritative nature while Eliot gets better. She’d guided him into a new, thriving relationship with the man and now she’s the only one who can’t seem to get through to him. 

“I’m not sure,” she sets her book delicately on her lap, taking a quick glance outside at the still grey skies. “I don’t mind it, really. Reminds me of London.” 

He nods once and clucks his tongue. “Yeah.” 

She sighs dramatically. “Bit reminiscent of a very awful first date, no?” 

“What, the weather?” He asks, perplexed. 

“Our conversation,” she responds. “Awkward pauses, pointless observations and whatnot.” 

“Yeah,” he agrees with a tiny smile. “Yeah, it’s pretty awkward,” 

“Strange, isn’t it?” She asks, pitching her voice very carefully. “We’ve never had much of a problem in the past. We’d find issues to bicker over, at the very least.” 

“Before I lost five years’a memories,” he mentions, tone only slightly ironic. 

“And yet you seem to be getting on just fine with everyone else,” she doesn’t mean to be sharp with him, but it’s not like he’s a fragile thing. “Hardison and Parker I understand, I do. But I feel the need to point out that if you’re going to be cold to me it would really only be fair for you to act the same way towards Nate.” 

He smiles again. “Y’want me to be a bastard to both’a ya?” 

“Yes,” Sophie says seriously, realizing then how much she means it. “Or, barring that, you could stop being a bastard to me.” 

He drops his head for a moment, long hair curtaining around his face. When he looks up again his eyes are filled with emotion. More emotion, Sophie thinks, than she’s ever seen in him before. “I’m sorry.” 

She blinks a few times, trying to wrap her head around his eyes, his words. “You are?”

“I don’t know why I’m bein’ like this. Don’t know why...I know I trust you,” he shrugs, “I know...I remember about the Davids and the offices gettin’ blown up an’ everything, and it’s not like I’m holdin’ a grudge about it or anything, I just...I don’t know.” 

She takes a deep breath and nods once. “Well, that’s something, I suppose.” 

“What’s somethin’?” He asks, tilting his head to the side in a way that reminds her vividly of Parker. 

“You admitting fault.” 

“That aint fault,” he balks, staring at her with that annoyed face that she’s gotten so used to in the past three years. “That’s...I dunno what that is, but it aint _fault_.” 

“Are you playing the brain damage card?” She asks seriously. “Because I’ll have you know that the clout on that dried up when you took off with Hardison and ran a con without telling anyone else.” 

He ducks his head then. “Knew about that, huh?” 

“I’m a grifter, Eliot,” she waves a hand, “It’s in my nature to tell when people are lying.” 

“And Hardison folded, right?” 

“And Hardison folded,” she agrees. “Like you wouldn’t believe. Barely even got a question out.” 

Eliot huffs a breath and looks back up. “Figures.” 

“It can remain our secret, if you’d like,” she offers mildly, knowing already that that’s exactly what will happen, no matter what he says next. 

“Yeah, well, I’d rather Nate not know,” he admits, as close to asking for a favor as she figures this man will ever be capable. “He’ll, y’know, start a _thing_ about it.” 

“Of course,” she agrees. 

There’s a lull then in their conversation. Sophie takes a breath and goes for broke. “Can we talk about it?” 

“About what?” 

“Why you woke up with an inexplicable distaste for me.” She’s lived, and worked, long enough to know that sometimes the only way to get what you want is to ask for it. 

“I wouldn’t call it a distaste,” his eyes narrow. “And we can, I guess.” He shrugs. “I jus’...like I said, I don’t know. I’ll stop bein’ a jackass.” 

“You’ll _try_ to stop being a jackass,” Sophie amends, though her words aren’t harsh at all, just factual – damn near clinical, in fact. A habit she’d picked up in childhood from her mother. “And perhaps you’ll be successful. However, I’d rather you no longer _wanted_ to act in such a way, not just repress it for my benefit.” 

He closes his eyes tightly for a moment and then opens them wide. “Uh...” 

“Please,” she adds sweetly. “For me?” 

Eliot Spencer – with or without five years of memories – is many things: dangerous, honest, protective, powerful, seductive, smart, and loyal, to name a few. What he’s not, however, is any match for the grifting-honed charms that Sophie’s chiseled to perfection over the course of a lifetime. 

“Yeah,” he breathes out eventually. “Yeah, I guess...” 

She grins triumphantly. It’s been a long time since getting her way about something has been this important. “Excellent.” 

\--

“What are we doing here?” Parker demands, standing in the bakery section of a local grocery store with her hands on her hips. 

“We were outta Baked Lay’s.” Hardison comments, gesturing to the basket he’s got in his hands that has five or six different flavors of the chips stashed within it. 

“I really needed a new bottle of shampoo,” Nate shrugs when Parker turns towards him. “And razors. I need razors, too, don’t let me forget,” he says this last bit to Hardison, who nods. 

“Yeah, man, yeah, absolutely. I need one’a those, whaddya call ‘em? Sticky roller thingies.” He makes a gesture and Nate clicks his fingers, as if Hardison’s motions had somehow made sense. 

“A lint brush?” 

“Yeah, yeah,” the other man nods eagerly. “One’a them.” 

“Sure, yeah. We can grab that.” The mastermind agrees. 

Parker throws her hands up, letting her palms slap against her thighs when they land, huffing exaggeratedly. “Boys.” 

\--

“You shouldn’t do that,” Sophie gestures towards the tin of chew Eliot had just taken out of his pocket, purely out of habit. “It’s horrible for your gums.” 

“Right,” he debates having some anyway, but keeps it unopened in his hands, something to fiddle with. 

“So you didn’t remember about that, then?” She asks carefully. Eliot goes over everything they’ve been talking about. From the David statues, to Sterling, to her and Nate, to Moreau, to...well, there isn’t much they haven’t talked about this past hour. 

“No,” he takes a breath, feeling the strain of talking in his voice, of nodding in his neck. How people maintain marriages he’ll never understand. “No, I didn’t remember...and Parker never mentioned it, so.” He shrugs again, helplessly. 

“What I don’t quite understand about that brain of yours,” she’s tapping one foot along to an imaginary beat, more at ease with him now that they’ve talked than she has been since he’d gotten hurt. “Is that you’ve remembered things from the time I was gone. About jobs and the others, but not that I wasn’t there, and not about Tara.” 

“Yeah,” Eliot snorts. “Fucked up, right?” 

“You’ve remembered things that happened while Nate was in jail,” she goes on. “And _that_ Nate was in jail, which is a memory all its own. Have you remembered, I’m curious, anything about the two years we weren’t a team?” 

Eliot shakes his head, not having expected that question, and certainly not just then. “Huh?” 

“Well, we've been working together for three years, but you lost five. For no good reason that the doctors were able to give us, by the way,” and she still sounds marginally bitter about that, as if his inability to remember this chunk of his life was somehow caused by a hospital error. 

“Brain injuries don’t always work real logically,” he points out gently. “Sometimes things just...disappear.” 

“That doesn’t...” she takes a short, sharp breath, cutting herself off. “Never mind. Have you?” 

“Have I...”

“It really is quite insulting when you play dumb, Eliot,” she sighs tiredly. “I know exactly how intelligent you are.” 

“Some,” he admits evenly. “Not as much as I’ve remembered about you guys.” 

“Hmm,” she studies him carefully, “And I suppose you’re not going to say more on the matter than that?”

“So, how long were you gone?” He counters, changing the subject that blatantly should be answer enough. 

She accepts it with a small nod, and then an answer. “Several months. I came back when Tara called me and told me about Nate taking down the mayor. You were...on a ship with him. Fairly injured, though no less snarky than usual. You blamed yourself, later, for Nate getting shot.” 

Eliot points a single finger at her and says seriously, “I am not snarky.” 

“Of course not,” she rolls her eyes. 

“And I could have stopped that bullet.” 

“You’re Superman, are you?” She huffs. “Might not want to share that with Parker. She’ll be jealous that you can fly and she can’t.” 

“I could have-”

“Your need to protect us is very noble,” Sophie interrupts him then, “You do, and have always done, a remarkably fine job at it. I trust you, Eliot. With my life and everything else. You are, however, not a superhero.” 

The hitter takes a ragged breath. Nate had told him about what had happened in that warehouse with Moreau. At the very beginning of all of this, back in the hospital the night he’d woken up, when the others hadn’t been there to hear. Nate had told him that Moreau was in jail and about the con they’d run on him. He’d babbled about the Italian and San Lorenzo. Then, quietly and with determination in his eyes, he’d told Eliot what he’d done. He’d mentioned _guns, death,_ and _cleanup_. He’d told him that he hadn’t wanted the others to know and that they still don’t. 

The information had overwhelmed him at the time – he couldn’t imagine then having picked up a gun for these people – but he’s glad now that he has it. He hasn’t remembered that night on his own yet, but when he does - if he does - he’ll be relieved to have the context; to have those questions answered, those worries and fears already quieted. 

“You come closer than any human being I’ve ever known, though,” she adds softly. 

He shakes his head. “I’m good at my job.” 

“It’s a little bit more than a job by now,” she says. “At least, to us it’s become more than that. I think, before your coma, it was to you, too. And I hope-”

“It is,” he interrupts her, and then clears his throat. “It will be.” 

She nods. “Is there anything I can do to help?” 

He quirks a smile. “Jus’ let me know, next time, when I’m actin’ like a fool.” 

TBC...


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Memories are dangerous things. You turn them over and over, until you know every touch and corner, but still you'll find an edge to cut you.”  
>  ― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns_

\---

“Can you run an address for me?” Eliot asks Hardison loudly enough that the others – all of them in the room together – can hear it. 

Sophie and Nate stop what they’re doing in the living room, and Parker glances up from the pile of ropes she’d been fiddling with on the floor. Hardison lifts his eyes away from his computer and there’s a long beat of silence before he shakes his head and says, “Yeah, of course, sure. What...” 

Eliot hands him a slip of paper with the numbers and street name on it. Hardison glances at it once, and then starts clicking away on the laptop that seems forever connected to his fingertips. 

He turns around, bringing the others into his line of sight, while the hacker does his thing. 

“Well,” Sophie breathes after a few beats of awkward silence. “Are you going to make us guess?” 

“Remembered somethin’ about my place,” he shrugs easily, not afraid of giving them this information, not afraid of having it used against him. 

“Your place, like, where you live?” Parker asks, making no move to get up off the floor. 

“Yeah,” he says easily enough. “Figure, if I’m right, it might be a good idea for me to get back there.” He looks at Nate. “Can only sleep on your couch for so long, man.” 

The older man nods, but doesn’t comment. He thinks he can see Sophie biting a hole through her cheek, even from the other side of the room. Hardison’s still clicking away, and there’s a few more beats of silence before he says, “Uh, it looks legit.” 

Eliot turns back around. “Looks legit?” 

“It’s a house, not far outside’a town,” his eyes don’t leave the computer screen. “It was bought outright a few months after we started workin’ in Boston by a...Chuck Mawhinney? I dunno, man,” he finally glances up at Eliot, “That aint an alias I ever...what?” 

Eliot’s smiling a little, the nostalgia of the name making him comfortable. “That’s me, man.” 

The hacker still looks somewhat worried about it, and when Eliot turns around again Sophie and Nate are exchanging nervous glances. 

Parker, however, lets out a tiny giggle. “I get it.” 

Eliot rolls his eyes. “Of course you do.” 

“Well, you can’t very well just _go_ there, now can you?” Sophie sits up straighter, eyes locked on him seriously. 

“I can’t?” He asks, halfway between perplexed and challenging. 

“You’ve been gone for well over a month,” she says, as if he hadn’t already known this. “What if someone...oh, I dunno? Bobbie trapped the place. You’re the one always going on about your never ending list of   
unimaginable enemies. You think it’s _safe_ to just walk in-”

“Sophie,” Nate interrupts her gently, laying a hand on her arm when her speech patterns start getting erratic. “I’m sure Eliot has top-notch security.” 

“Oh, he does,” Hardison pipes up, gesturing to his computer screen as if the others can see it, or would understand it if they did. “He’s got a security system that the Royal family would think is overkill, and about a dozen trip...” he trails off and studies the computer screen for a few long moments. “How’d you get all’a this, dude? I _know_ you aint this good with technology.” 

Eliot shrugs. “Don’t remember.” 

“Bull.” 

Sophie had been the first one to call him out on using the brain damage card, but once she’d broken the ice the others had taken to plucking out what’s become to Eliot a very tried and true excuse. He still gets away with it sometimes - especially with Nate and Hardison for some reason – but little by little they’re getting far too good at telling when he’s lying about not remembering. 

It’s probably messed up, this game he’s taken to playing with them that makes light of a serious injury that had come so close to pulling them all apart, but Eliot had figured out a while ago that _messed up_ is how these people do _normal_ and _caring_. 

He smiles now at the hacker’s vehement declaration. “A’right, so I mighta stolen it from you.” 

“You...” he gasps, “That’s...that’s...” 

“I helped him,” Parker throws out. 

Eliot’s attention snaps to her, amusement gone in lieu of genuine surprise. “You did?” 

“Yeah,” she shrugs a little, smile dimming around the edges. “I thought you remembered.” 

“Not...wait.” He shakes his head. “You’ve known, this whole time, where I live?” 

“Uh, Eliot,” Sophie tries to interrupt, but the hitter ignores her. 

“Well, yeah,” Parker shrugs a little, and bites her lip. “Hardison said you didn’t want to know.” 

“Whoa, now, wait a second,” the hacker jumps in, sounding nervous, but Eliot’s eyes are still glued to the thief. 

“I didn’t want Hardison to try to _find_...” he trails off. “Never mind.” 

“Are you mad?” She demands, “Because I was just doing what you wanted.” 

“You didn’t _ask_ me what I wanted,” he points out, voice teetering on the edge of anger. He knows logically that it’s not her fault, and that it doesn’t matter, and that she had probably just been acting in   
what she’d felt was his best interest, but... “Forget it.” 

“Eliot...” Sophie tries, voice set in that soft maternal lull. “Why is this a big deal?”

“It aint,” he snaps, but his tone contradicts his sentiment. “I’m goin’ out.” 

They might try to stop him, might shout his name or call him an idiot, but Eliot doesn’t hear it, doesn’t want to hear it. He slams his way out of Nate’s apartment, stays in the bar downstairs just long enough to   
have a shot of Jack, and then leaves, seamlessly losing himself in the bustling city streets.

\--

“What was that all about?” Sophie’s the first one to speak after Eliot storms out, looking amongst the others, who all seem as baffled as she does. 

“He’s mad at me,” Parker shrugs like it doesn’t matter, but she stands up then, leaving her rappelling equipment on the ground, and won’t meet any of their eyes. “I should go.” 

“Wait a second, mamma,” Hardison demands, sounding near panicked. “This aint your fault. Eliot...the dude’s brain, it’s broken, remember?” 

Parker nods easily enough. “Yeah. And mad at me.” 

“He’s not _mad_ at you,” Sophie says. In truth, she has no idea whether or not she’s lying about that, but she figures it doesn’t really matter right now. “He was just...thrown.” 

“Last time he acted like that he ran away,” Parker points out. “We had to follow him, and Hardison almost got shot and...I don’t like it when he’s like that. When’s he gonna get better?” She demands, looking right at   
Nate. 

“He-he has been getting better,” the mastermind says carefully, and Sophie internally applauds his words. “He’s been remembering and-”

“But nothing’s the _same_ ,” she interrupts, angrily this time. Impatiently and petulantly, like this has been building up for a long while and is just now breaching the surface. “He got hurt and everything   
changed, but Eliot _always_ gets hurt, and you never cared before.” 

“ _Parker_ ,” Sophie reprimands her harsh words. 

“No, no _Parker_ ,” she mimics Sophie’s tone, “He _always_ gets hurt. He gets hit by cars, and thrown into rivers, and falls down flights and flights of stairs, and he fights guys that you wouldn’t go   
_near_ ,” she spits at Nate, “And you just expect him to be okay afterwards. A day later, and you expect him to do it all over again, and he _does_ , because he’s Eliot. But now, all of a sudden, it’s different. And how is that _fair_?”

“Parker...” Hardison’s voice is soft and contorted into something painful. 

Sophie blinks several times, trying to clear her vision. “You...you may have a point, there. With that.” She’s got a rubber hair band on her wrist that she’s plucking at, avoiding everyone else’s eyes. She doesn’t want to see them right now. 

“It’s been too long,” she says, quieter now, worn out. “If you keep doing this he’s...he’s gonna leave. He’s gonna get mad at _all_ of us and...” 

“He wouldn’t do that, mamma,” Hardison’s says huskily. “He wouldn’t just take off.” 

“You don’t _know_ that,” Parker says, and it’s the first time Sophie’s ever heard that girl sound defeated. 

Something fierce and primal takes hold of her heart and she looks up, searching out Parker’s eyes. When she finds them she holds on, unwaveringly determined. “We won’t let that happen, Parker.” 

“No,” Nate adds, hand clenching around her arm then, supportive and real. “We won’t.” 

\--

Eliot has to admit that this, right here, is probably the worst thing about his amnesia to date.

“Where’s your merry ‘ol band of thieving comrades _now_?” The second guy punches him in the solar plexus, again, and Eliot grunts a gasp. 

“Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, bubba,” he smiles tight around the mounting pain, and then winks at the guy. 

This earns him another punch from guy two, and bitch slap from guy one. And that, frankly, just insults him. He leans back some and tugs on the cuffs binding him to the chair. They rattle around the wood, but   
don’t give any.

Eliot’s already got a plan for getting out of here – even has a fairly good idea about where _here_ is – but his strategy gets a bit more complicated when a third guys appears out of the shadows holding a   
gun. 

“Mr. Spencer.” Great, he groans silently. He hates Russians. “I was under the impression that you were a mute.” 

He’s got no idea what that’s supposed to mean, so he just shrugs. “Things change.” 

The Russian laughs. He’s the one in charge of all of this, Eliot notes. The way the other two stand down in his presence, back away to give him space, it’s obvious. 

“You know, Mr. Spencer,” the Russian man gets closer to him, but seems in no big hurry to reach an endgame. “I learned a lot about your crew while I was in prison.” 

Eliot nods evenly. “We’ve got a bit of a reputation.” 

“And a lot about _you_ ,” he clucks his tongue. “Wanted in eight different countries, bounties on your head larger than you or I could possibly imagine, Damien Moreau’s right-hand man for, what was it? Just   
over half a decade?” 

“Somethin’ like that,” Eliot agrees tightly. Not talking won’t get him anywhere but injured or dead, and forming a repertoire will probably give him a chance to get out of here, but none of that adds up to him being happy about discussing his days with Moreau. 

“Some of your retrievals are things of legends,” The Russian goes on, “And, here’s what I just couldn’t figure out while I was learning all about you, Mr. Spencer,” he smiles curiously, near genuinely. “Why is that   
you, being the man that you are, have joined forces with group of common _thieves_?” 

“They’re not exactly common,” Eliot says, tone neutral but tight. “They’re the best at what they do.” 

“To be sure,” the Russian agrees easily. He moves then to the other side of the table, taking a seat across from Eliot. The gun remains on his lap and the two thugs are still standing behind the chair he’s cuffed to. 

“The best thieves, grifters, conmen...perhaps in the world. But they are not your kind of people.” 

“And what are my kinda people?” He demands, temper getting the better of him. 

“Killers, Mr. Spencer,” the Russian waves a hand jovially, and laughs. “Assassins and snipers, men who specialize in cleanup and disposal. Men like Damien Moreau.” 

“Men you can’t trust,” Eliot retorts. 

“And you trust Ford and the others, do you?” The Russian laughs outright. “Trust them to what, exactly? To have your back? Do you depend on them, Mr. Spencer? Because from what I’ve seen-”

“What’ve you seen?” He interrupts, angry growl punching out his chest. “Huh? Tell me what you’ve seen you pathetic sonnova bitch.” 

A blindingly hot pain in his arm causes him to cry out despite himself, and he whips his head around towards the source of the attack, making his chair jump and tilt dangerously. “What the-”

“That’s quite enough, Mr. Owens,” the Russian says calmly. “I don’t want Mr. Spencer too badly injured before I make him the offer.” 

“You stabbed me,” Eliot says to the man behind him, eyes still focused there, once the shock wears off some and he can recognize that familiar pain for what it is.

“Flesh wound,” the guy shrugs, looking unhappy about it. “You’ll be fine.” 

“Mr. Spencer, please, your attention once more?” The Russian asks politely enough, so Eliot swivels his head and grins sarcastically. “Good, good.” He pauses for a beat and then continues. God, he _hates_

Russians. Always with the talking. “You recall, yes? What you and your _team_ stopped me from accomplishing two years ago?” 

Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. 

“Uh,” he clears his throat some, focuses on the burning flesh of his upper arm, the trickle of blood down to his elbow. “Yeah. Sure.” 

“And you’d be willing, then, to help me in a similar heist?” The Russian presses, something like actual curiosity in his words. 

Heist, Eliot’s brain narrows in on that. Heist...robbery? Theft? Infiltration? 

_Shit_. 

“Yeah,” he clears his throat. “I suppose I could manage that. Assumin’ your guys stop abusin’ me.” 

“They’re criminals, Mr. Spencer. Very similar to the kind you used to be.” The Russian reminds him. “And I’m sure your no stranger to abuse yourself.” 

“No,” he lets out a deep sigh, feeling weary and tired, and wishing that he would have just stayed at Nate’s. “Definitely not a stranger to that.” 

\--

“He can’t be gone again,” Sophie whispers near frantically to Nate. “The only reason we found him the last time was because he was out of it, not entirely himself. If he’s run again...” 

“I know,” Nate says shortly, as on edge as the rest of them. “I know.” 

“Guys, I’m not gettin’ _anything_ ,” Hardison calls out. Nate and Sophie each take a breath and head over the table. 

“Nothing?” The mastermind presses. 

“Nothing,” he shakes his head. “No GPS, no traces. It’s like he just disappeared. Again.” 

“And Parker?” Sophie asks, unwilling to let that sentiment sit between them. “Has she found anything at his place?” 

“No,” the hacker grits his teeth hard. “She says she’s not surprised. She thinks it’s her fault.” 

“It’s not.” Nate shakes his head. “It’s mine, if anything. I shouldn’t have...I should have pushed. I should have acted normal.” 

“You did what you thought was best,” Sophie comforts him. “What we all did. The extent of his injuries...” 

“Wasn’t the issue, not really.” He cuts in. “Parker was right. Eliot always gets hurt and we always...we don’t...And this shouldn’t have been any different.” 

“He lost five years,” Sophie presses, looking on as if he were some kind of crazy. “He lost _all_ of his memories of us, didn’t know who we were-”

“He knew he trusted us.” Nate mutters. 

“Regardless,” the grifter breezes past that. “It’s not like he was sporting a few bruises or a broken bone, Nate. He had amnesia.” 

“Still does, technically,” Hardison butts in, “And I don’t think sittin’ around here wallowing in what y’all did wrong is gonna get him back here any faster.” 

Sophie’s startled by Hardison’s vehemence, but she can’t deny that the man has a point. “So let’s look at this logically.” She nods shortly. “If you were Eliot and you wanted to disappear, where would you go?” 

Hardison snorts outright. “You’re talkin’ about Eliot Spencer.” 

“He’s right,” Nate nods. “It might be easier to start with a list of places he _wouldn’t_ , or couldn’t go.” 

“So, cross off all the countries that have a bounty on his head,” the younger man agrees, “That just leaves...about a third of the developed nations in the world and more than half of the undeveloped ones.” 

“Plus anywhere in the continental United States,” Sophie adds. 

“Not exactly a small amount of ground to cover.” Nate snorts. 

“Should we even be doing this?” Sophie pulls back suddenly, remembering something someone had said to her once about letting people go. “I mean, if he’s run, and he doesn’t want to be found...” 

“We’re assuming he ran,” It’s Parker’s voice that cuts through their musings this time, and Sophie startles at hearing it. Judging by the way the other two jump and flinch back, she doesn’t think she’s the only one   
who hadn’t known that the thief had re-entered the apartment. 

“And you don’t think...” Nate starts, gathering his bearings fast enough. 

“I don’t know.” Parker shakes her head. “He was mad, but...but I don’t know if he was mad enough to _leave_.” 

“Maybe it wasn’t anger, Parker,” Sophie suggests softly. “I doubt he _was_ angry enough to leave. But frustrated, maybe.” 

“Y’know, she’s got a point,” Hardison pipes up. “Eliot’s head may be all screwed up right now, but the man’s still solid.” 

Sophie and Nate exchange a look. “Well, where does that observation leave us?” 

They’re all silent for a few seconds. Then Parker breathes something like, “ah,” and takes her phone out. She starts pressing buttons and Hardison, who’s closest to her, risks a glance over her shoulder. 

It takes a few seconds, but soon enough his eyes are wide and he balks, “You’re sending him a 911 text?” 

“What? No. Parker,” Nate tries to rush forward, stop her motions, but Parker sends the message before he can get close enough and then looks up, triumphantly. 

“There.” 

“There?” Sophie repeats, mildly dumbfounded. “What’s that going to accomplish?” 

“Eliot’s still Eliot,” she says firmly. “If he can, he’ll answer that text.” 

“And if he doesn’t?” Nate presses, anger flaring in his eyes. “What if he doesn’t, Parker?” 

“Then he’s in trouble.” The blonde states factually, “And we’ll help him.” 

No one mentions the third option, the one that goes, ‘what if Eliot just doesn’t care anymore?’ No one wants that to be true and Parker refuses to believe that it might be. So they stare at the cell phone in Parker’s   
hand, and they wait. 

TBC...


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Memories are bullets. Some whiz by and only spook you. Others tear you open and leave you in pieces.”_  
>  ― Richard Kadrey, Kill the Dead

\---  
Chapter 7  
\---

His phone buzzes on the table between him and the Russian and he glances down at it without thought. He can’t read it, of course, but he recognizes the string of numbers displayed there as belonging to Parker. 

He wishes that he hadn’t destroyed the GPS tracker that had been tucked away in the back of the cell; wishes that the others had a way to find him, to see, at least, that he hadn’t run from them again. 

The Russian picks up the device and hmms at it. “911. Emergency. Please help.” He reads out loud. Eliot’s gut clenches painfully. “What do you suppose that means?” 

“If ya can’t figure that out it’s no wonder you ended up in jail,” Eliot breathes shortly. They’re in trouble. _Parker’s_ in trouble. And he’s stuck here with two idiot henchmen and a Russian with a goddamned gun. 

_The man lunges towards Parker, and Eliot sees red. “No!” Its half growl, half scream as he tackles the security guard to the floor._  
And then...

_He doesn’t look threatening, isn’t holding a weapon or clenching his fists, but he’s got Parker backed against a wall, and Eliot follows his instincts. He gets the man in a hold; forearm pressed tight under his chin, pressure on his windpipe, and slams him once, just to get his attention._

_Then there’s Parker’s voice in his ear, head over his shoulder, “It’s okay, he’s okay.” And Eliot’s releasing the harmless man, trusting Parker on this and moving on._

One time...

_She’s crying. She’s crying, and Eliot’s vibrating with the need to fix it. Fix her past, fix the pain, just make it all go away because she doesn’t deserve this. No one does, but especially not her. She’s his. To take care of and protect and...dammit._

_“Yeah, I wanna kill him. Can we make that happen?” She’s looking at Nate, but Eliot’s the one who responds._

_“Yeah,” he says it so casually. To him, it is pretty casual. He’d be more than willing. All he needs is the say so from her. “I could, I mean I could...”_

_Then Nate’s talking and forming a plan and...the moment’s gone. But he’ll never forget. He’d kill for her._

Finally...

_He’s thinking about Nate and the Italian when he picks up that gun. Mostly Nate, because he only kind of cares if the Italian survives. But if he doesn’t do this neither of them will, and that’s unacceptable._

_He always knew this day would come. The showdown between his old life and his new one. He’s been praying since Nate had gotten out of jail that he’d be able to do it alone, go off into battle armed with only his own guilt and need for revenge._

_But, of course, Nate is there. Nate sees him pick up the gun. Says, “Eliot...” like there’s a speech just waiting to get out. Like there’s an excuse or a justification. But there’s no time for any of that._

_“Get her out of here.” And then there’s not another moment to spare._

_He shoots. They get out, Nate and the Italian. They get out and he keeps shooting._

_One by one Moreau’s men fall._

_He causes an explosion, and then Chapmen’s behind him._

_“You said you didn’t like guns.”_

_The fire’s hot on the back of his neck when he turns to face him. “I don’t.”_

_He pulls the trigger so many times, more times than he has to._

_“Never said I couldn’t use ‘em.” He tells the corpse. Its eyes are still open._

_He’d done this._

_For them._

The sound he makes when he breaks the arm of the chair is deep and guttural, so primal that he doesn’t even recognize himself as having made it. 

The Russian’s gun fires and he reaches forward, nearly blind with rage. How dare this man try to keep him away from them. His team. His _family_. They need him. They need him, and he’s done a hell of a lot more for them than this. 

He’s got both his hands free in moments, too long in the context, but moments all the same. His wrist might be something close to broken, but he can’t feel it. All he can feel is rage and fear. They _need_ him, and he’s not there. Shame, too. He can certainly feel that. 

His hand finds the barrel of the gun, still warm, and he yanks hard. The Russian stumbles, falls towards him. He won’t let go of the gun, and neither will Eliot. 

One of the men behind him tries to stop his movements, but Eliot’s not having it. Not toady. 

He turns swiftly and throws out a fist, catching one of the men in the throat. While he’s stumbling back the other one lurches forward. Eliot growls, because he doesn’t feel like he’s got enough control here. 

He twists the Russian’s arm, breaking it in two like a twig. The man howls and falls to his knees, giving Eliot full possession of the gun. For a heartbeat he wants to use that weapon the way it was made to be used. 

Pop. Pop. Pop. 

Three cracks, three deaths. Easy as that. 

But he remembers why he doesn’t like guns – that’s a memory that’s older than five – and he’s not about to forget now, not just because he’s hurt, scared, and _pissed_. 

He empties the clip and tosses the metal aside. A sense of power surges through his veins. 

He’s been waiting a long time for this. 

One of the goons, he doesn’t know which one anymore, comes at him. He plants his feet firmly on the ground, legs spread just enough to keep his balance. “C’mon,” he taunts. 

The man lunges. Eliot dodges, hits twice, and then grabs. One hand on the temple, the other under the jaw. One clean _twist_ and then – gone. 

He smiles at the remaining man. “Whaddya waitin’ for?” He demands. 

This man has a knife. Long and sharp, probably pulled out of his boot when Eliot had broken the cuffs. The hitter spares it a glance, then steps over the body on the ground and prepares to make quick work of  
him. 

He’ll save the Russian for last. Maybe he’ll use the knife. 

A part of Eliot wants to enjoy it more than this – more than fast and efficient – but he knows that isn’t the point this time. The point is to get them out of the way so he can get back to the people who matter. 

\----------

“I don’t like it when you come home broken,” Parker states factually enough, still clinging to his neck in a moment eerily reminiscent to the day he’d first come back to them. 

“I don’t, either,” he smiles into her hair, patting her on the back comfortingly until she’s ready to pull away. 

“Man, y’know what I went through to try to find your ass?” Hardison’s griping even as he pulls him into a half-hug. “I hacked the CIA, the FBI, Interpol. Man, I tapped into gopher protocol that the secret service uses  
and _that_ , let me tell you, aint no easy thing to do.” 

“I don’t know what you’re sayin’ to me, man,” Eliot tells him with a laugh. 

When Sophie pulls him in for a hug he doesn’t try to get away from. Just returns it for a few beats and breathes out, letting the tension melt away. He can’t remember hugging this much before he’d met these  
people, that’s for sure. 

“We’re sorry about the fake emergency page,” she wipes delicately at one of her eyes, blinking rabidly for a breath. “Parker’s idea.” 

“And it was a good one.” She huffs. “How else would we have known about the Russian?” 

Nate and Eliot share a look. 

They had indeed found out what had happened to him, at some point between Eliot not responding to Parker’s page and his escape, but only Nate knows _exactly_ what had gone down. 

It’s a trend between them, the hitter’s realized. Eliot knows things about Nate that the others don’t – even if he’s still getting those memories back – and Nate knows about all the people Eliot’s killed since he’s  
joined this crew. 

They seem to have a history of covering for each other, of making each other better in the other’s eyes. It’s an arrangement that Eliot thinks he’ll have no problem falling back into.

“Yeah, man, I’m sorry about that.” Hardison’s saying now, distracting Eliot from his silent communication with Nate. 

“About what?” He asks. 

“You don’t remember?” He asks, eyes wide and a little afraid. 

He’d gotten a lot of memories back when he’d gotten Parker’s fake emergency text. A lot of memories, including the one he’d been dreading the most. But the hacker’s words are still falling short of anything  
resembling sense.

“Remember what?” He demands. He’s not going to be mad about whatever it is, and he wishes Hardison would just get on with it. 

“That man, the Russian,” Sophie’s the one who takes the reins of the conversation when the others seem unable. “He was part of a con...the first con you all ran after I left.” 

“Oh,” Eliot blinks a few times. “Huh.” 

“It was kinda my fault,” Hardison picks up, scratching nervously at the back of his neck. “I mighta gone in a little too strong and, maybe, y’know...” 

“You’re a terrible grifter,” Nate butts in. “But we’ve gotten past that.” 

“What’ll happen to him now?” Parker asks, breaking past the rising tension. “The Russian, I mean?” 

“Back to jail,” Nate answers quickly and casually, shooting another glance at Eliot. “We won’t be seeing him again.” 

“Yeah,” Eliot agrees absently, mostly just to say something. “It’s not a big deal.” He looks over at Hardison, deciding it even as he speaks. “Bad guys come back after they get out of jail. It happens.” 

“And sometimes they use tranquilizer guns from a hundred yards away,” Sophie’s shaking her head. “Coward.” 

Eliot couldn’t agree more, and smiles his appreciation of her summation. 

“So...you’re not pissed?” Hardison confirms. 

Really, if Eliot were going to be pissed about anything it would be the fake emergency text that Parker had sent to his phone. If she hadn’t done that...well, it doesn’t much matter. It’s not like he has any regrets. 

“Nah,” he tosses out, casual as can be. “I aint pissed. I’m _fine_.” 

“So you’ve been saying,” Sophie notes. 

“For a while now,” Eliot agrees, “Aint it about time y’all start listenin’ to me?"

\---------- ---------- ---------- ----------

“I think that’s everything, man,” Hardison drops a box down in his living room and sighs. “Who knew you could collect this much crap in a month?” 

Eliot doesn’t bother pointing out that the majority of the boxes they’d just lugged in had been filled with things that Sophie had bought him and that Parker had stolen for him. It sweet, their need to send him off to his place well prepared. It kind of reminds him of his sister and his momma the day he’d left for basic training. 

“Quit your whinin’,” he kicks the hacker’s foot. 

“I aint whining,” the other man pouts. “How’d Nate get outta helpin’ us with this, by the way?” 

Eliot grins, “He’s meetin’ with a client this afternoon.” 

“Really?” Hardison’s eyebrows shoot up. “Well I’ll be damned.” 

“Yeah,” he agrees, “It’s about time, right?” 

Hardison follows him as he wanders into the others rooms of his house. He knows they’d done a scan of the security systems before they’d come here today, and Eliot himself had done a quick walk through the night before, but still he feels the need to take a look around, make absolutely sure that everything is exactly how he’d left it. Or rather, how he knows he’d probably left it, since his memories about this place  
aren’t too vivid. 

“Know who he’s meetin’ with?” Hardison asks, looking around as Eliot goes through the drawers in his bedroom. A switchblade and some numb-chucks tucked in behind his socks and underwear, more knives and a stun gun buried under a pile of t-shirts. He nods to himself, satisfied. 

“No idea.” He answers the younger man. “I heard’em sayin’ somethin’ about a business downtown, but that aint real specific.” 

“Well, what’re we waitin’ for?” Hardison asks. “Let’s get back to the bar.” 

Eliot thinks that’s a mighty fine idea.

\--

“Don’t sneeze.” Parker warns him in a low voice. “Don’t cough, or blow your nose.” 

“Yeah, Parker, I _get_ it,” he growls. 

“Well, this is the first job we’ve done since your brain got hurt, I just want to make sure you remember.” She bites back at him, trying and failing to sound innocent. 

“To not cough or sneeze in front of the germaphobe?” He bites, “Yeah, I think I can remember that.” 

“Play nice, you two.” Nate warns from the comms. 

Eliot and Parker make simultaneous faces at each other, mocking the older man who’s not there to see them. It causes a burst of laughter from Parker and a snort from Eliot. 

“What’s so funny?” Sophie demands, voice low since she’s at a party, establishing her role. 

They can’t exactly admit that what’s got them laughing is a mutual desire to mock Nate, so Eliot clears his throat and says, “Uh, car in front of us had a funny bumper sticker.” 

This causes Parker to laugh again, for whatever reason, and Eliot rolls his eyes. 

“What?” Hardison demands, no doubt trying to pull up a visual on the monitors in the back of the van. 

Eliot shakes his head even though no one but Parker can see him. “Never mind.” 

\--

Eliot falls back into a routine pretty quick, once they dive head first into that first con. He fights when Nate tells him to fight, follows the orders that don’t really feel like orders, he takes care of the bad guys, watches out for Parker and Sophie, and makes sure Hardison stays as far away from the violence as possible. 

His main goal is to protect them, followed closely by getting the job done and keeping an eye on Nate. He understands it mostly, why he feels this way. His instincts have kicked themselves into overdrive since  
they’d taken on this client, and it’s okay and everything, good. Just...exhausting. 

Needless to say, four days into the con, with the final showdown set to happen tomorrow, he’s not exactly thrilled when there’s a knock on his door at nine o’clock at night. 

“What?” He groans when he opens the door. “I’m busy.” 

“Doin’ what, exactly?” Hardison quirks an eyebrow. 

“Sleepin’,” Eliot bites, even though he hadn’t been yet. 

“Uh, right.” The kid looks suddenly nervous, and maybe a little guilty. “I can come back, I guess, later.”

After a moment of debate Eliot clenches his jaw and grits out, “What’re ya doin’ here?” 

Hardison holds up a grocery bag that had been hanging at his side. “I brought beer.” He pauses. “And marshmallows, gram crackers, and chocolate. But that’s for Parker.” 

“Parker’s here?” Eliot asks. 

“No, but she wanted me to leave this stuff in your kitchen,” the hacker explains, “So she could make S’mores next time she came over.” 

He accepts this answer easily enough because, well, it’s Parker. But, “Still doesn’t explain why you’re here. Right now.” 

“Can I come in?” He asks, but won’t meet Eliot’s gaze. “Y’know. For a minute?” 

Eliot wants to say no. Wants to shut the door in his face and get some goddamned sleep because he’s been up for three days fighting idiots with guns and bad haircuts, but Hardison looks so off, standing there in his doorway, and Eliot can’t bring himself to turn him away. “Fine,” he growls eventually, “But we aint watchin’ any’a that Star Fence crap.” 

“It’s Star _gate_ ,” Hardison corrects, looking damn near insulted. “And you don’t appreciate the character development, anyway.”

\--

“Y’wanna order pizza or something?” Eliot asks, feeling marginally awkward. He’d had a routine down while he’d been staying with Nate, but now that he’s back in his own place his need for privacy and solitude  
has reemerged. “How long you plannin’ on-”

“It was my fault.” Hardison blurts out. 

Standing there in his living room, the twenty-four year old hacker that Eliot’s started to think of as a friend looks like someone he loves is about to die. 

“What?” 

“The coma, your brain damage.” He shakes his head but won’t meet Eliot’s gaze. “It’s my fault. All of it.” 

The hitter closes his eyes and rubs a hand over them harshly. “No it’s not.” 

“Yes, yes it is.” He insists, a deeply etched frown contorting his features. “We were in the middle of a job, and I-I-I didn’t listen. You told me to back off, to stay away, but-but this guy, right? He had a gun-”

“I hate guns,” he can’t help but mutter. “They make everyone panic.” 

“And I did, man,” the hacker goes on, sounding as if every word is causing him physical pain. “I panicked, and I-I. You, you got distracted, because I was there, because I didn’t-didn’t listen.” 

“And?” Eliot presses. He gets that this is hard for the kid, he really does. But goddamn it, he’d been looking forward to getting some sleep tonight. 

“And...and I didn’t listen,” he emphasizes that like it’s the point. “Then this other guy, he came out of fucking _nowhere_. And he-he had this metal pipe and you-you didn’t...didn’t...because I was there, and I...” 

“You got in the way,” Eliot fills in, feeling guilty when the other man’s face falls. 

“Yeah,” he breathes, looking shamed. 

“Look, that shouldn’t’a mattered.” The hitter had known this conversation would happen, sooner or later. Whether he remembers the night of the accident or not, they do, and he’d known that at least one of them was feeling guilty about it. 

“What? What shouldn’t have-”

“It aint your job to...” Eliot sighs heavily. “It was a fight, man. Just a fight that went wrong. It’s happened before, it’ll happen again. It aint your fault.” 

“You-you can’t really think that,” the hacker balks, stuffing clenched fists into the pockets of his sweatshirt and glancing around like he’s looking for the hidden camera. 

“What am I supposed to think?” Eliot demands. “That ‘cause you were, what? _There_? That this is all your fault? Well, fine then,” he huffs. “It’s your fault for gettin’ in the way. And it’s Nate’s fault for takin’ the job, and Parker’s for pissin’ those guys off. Oh, and Sophie’s, too. For...doin’ whatever it was she was doin’.” 

Hardison squints at him. “Who did Parker piss off?” 

“The point,” the hitter barks, “is that if it’s your fault, then it’s everybody’s fault. Including mine.”

The younger man stares at him for a long minute. “Look,” he huffs eventually. “If you’re tryin’ to make me feel better about all’a this, then-”

“I aint tryin’ to make you feel better,” Eliot snorts. “I’m tryin’ to tell you that...you can’t _blame_ one member of a team when something like this happens.” 

“When the hell did you start handing out sage wisdom?” Hardison’s looking at him kind of strange now, like he can’t match up the words he’s hearing to the voice that’s saying them. “’Cause the doctor said that, uh, altered personality and shit might be a symptom of something...y’know, bad.” 

“Aint nothin’ in my personality’s altered, Hardison,” Eliot says firmly. “You work with a unit, you develop a mentality.” 

“And working with us and Nate, that’s changed...” he trails off then, eyes widening just a little. “You weren’t talking about us, were you?” 

“They keep tellin’ me you’re a genius,” Eliot chuckles, “’bout time I saw it up close.” 

“I-I didn’t think.” The hacker bows his head. “Sorry.” 

“For what, man?” Eliot asks calmly. “You feel guilty about me getting hurt. I get that, I do. But...don’t.” 

“Don’t?” He looks up again, forehead crinkled with the same disbelief that’s in his voice. 

“Yeah.” Eliot sighs. “Just...don’t. It’ll just make me an’ you, and everyone else, feel like shit. So yeah. Stop it.” 

“Stop it?” He echoes again. “Stop feeling guilty for something that I did?” 

“Do you listen to me when I talk?” He demands. 

Hardison lets out a laugh. “Reverse deja-vu.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing,” he shakes his head. “Just...I don’t know if I can just stop feeling guilty, y’know?” 

“Then go find yourself a good shrink, or talk to Sophie about it, or...do whatever. I don’t care.” He knows he probably sounds pretty harsh, but he’s been learning that sometimes harsh is the only way to get through to this kid. “ _Feeling_ guilty isn’t the same thing as _bein’_ guilty. I’d kick your ass if I saw fit, but I don’t do _feelings_. So suck it up. And put the damn beer in the fridge before it gets warm.” 

Eliot leaves him alone in the living room then, meandering into the adjacent room that has a TV – Hardison’s doing some months before the accident, Parker’s told him – and starts flipping through channels, patiently waiting. 

He’s about twenty minutes into some documentary about World War II when the hacker finally joins him on the couch, silently passing him a beer and putting his feet up on the coffee table. 

“There’s a Doctor Who marathon on BBC,” Hardison says casually. 

Eliot hands over the remote without a word but doesn’t bite back a groan when he gets a look at what they’re watching now. “I hate this sci-fi crap.” 

“This is _not_ sci-fi crap,” Hardison defends. “This is high quality entertainment right here, man.” 

“Yeah,” Eliot rolls his eyes and settles into the couch, letting something very similar to contentment wash over him. “Whatever you need to tell yourself, bubba.”

TBC...


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.  
>  \--Robert Frost_

\---  
\---

“The auditions are this Thursday, and I’d really appreciate if we could have this matter wrapped up before then,” Sophie’s saying, completely ignoring the fact that Nate’s lying under the sink in the bathroom, distracted and pissed. 

“We’re taking it to the cops tomorrow,” the mastermind reminds her, grimacing as the wrench he’s holding bangs loudly against one of the pipes. “Dammit,” he hisses. 

“I know what the _plan_ is,” Sophie goes on, and Nate wishes he could see her face, if only so he could glare at her. “But our plans have a history of getting waylaid, and I really think this part is going to   
enhance my reputation in the theater community.” 

Nate huffs an exaggerated breath. “Did you pick up any Roto-rooter the last time you went shopping?” 

Sophie’s quiet for a long moment and then, “What?” 

Finally Nate gives up on the obstinate pipe and drags himself out from under the sink. She’s staring at him like he’s ten different kinds of insane; it makes him grin despite his annoyance. “I put it on the list.” He mentions. 

“There was a list?” She asks, sounding baffled. 

“Do you listen to me when I talk?” He asks casually, wiping his hands on what he’s hoping isn’t one of the ‘nice’ towels that Sophie had decorated his bathroom with – judging by her lack of glare, it’s not – and finally hauls himself to his feet. 

“At times,” she tells him. “Often not when it involves...” she waves her hand at the sink, “home repairs and whatnot.” 

“It this pipe bursts tonight you’ll be singing a different tune,” he smiles crookedly. 

“If the pipe bursts we can pay to have it repaired,” she tells him. “It’s one of the many fringe benefits of being filthy rich criminals.” 

Nate glowers. “I can fix my own damn bathroom sink.” 

“Alright,” she shrugs. 

“I’m not _paying_ someone to do something that I can do myself for free,” he goes on, casting a sidelong glance at the sink in question. 

“Is this one of those testosterone laden declarations that I’m never going to understand?” She asks mildly.

Nate glares again and reemphasizes the point that, “I can fix my own damn bathroom sink.” 

“I’m sure you can,” she bites her bottom lip and looks between him and the sink. “Of course, if you were to get Eliot to do it for you, say,” she shrugs, “It might make him feel...” 

“Seriously?” He interrupts her while she’s searching for the right words. 

“What?” She demands, meeting his gaze and holding it sternly. 

“You’re gonna use Eliot’s amnesia as a way to get me to get _him_ to do a _simple_ ,” he points at the sink emphatically, “repair that I’m perfectly capable of doing myself?” 

“That’s not what I was going to do at all.” She crosses her arms and speaks with such a certainty that, if Nate didn’t know her better, he might believe. 

“Right,” he drawls sarcastically. 

“I was merely suggesting that Eliot may be...more inclined to...” she looks lost again, and aggravated. 

“To not break something?” Nate fills in. “You think he’s better at this kinda thing than I am. Admit it.” 

“I said nothing of the sort,” she huffs, lifting her chin in a movement that Nate can only describe accurately as being very _British_. 

“You-”

“Fine,” she speaks over him. “Fine, no, yes. You, you fix the bloody sink. See if I care.” 

“If you’d just gotten the stuff on the list,” he mutters. 

“Nate,” she sighs dramatically, “Have you ever known me to go to a supermarket?” 

The mastermind actually has to think about that one for a moment. “But...you shop.” 

“Retail and groceries,” she clucks her tongue disapprovingly, “are not at all the same thing.” 

“Then why did I give you the list?” He asks, mostly to himself.

“I have no idea,” she shrugs, just as mystified. “ _That_ you should have left to Eliot.” 

“So, what? Now I can’t shop either?” He demands. “Is Eliot the only person capable of doing anything useful around here?” 

“You don’t want Eliot to shop, he can’t fix your sink-”

“Because I’m perfectly capable.”

“But you expect _me_ to decipher the chicken scratch you call handwriting?” She ignores completely his interruption. 

“You were going out anyway.” He argues. 

“To buy _shoes_.” She rolls her eyes. 

“You need more?” He chuckles to himself, but quickly schools his features into something reminiscent of a serious expression when she glares at him. 

“Eliot and Parker were out not two days ago,” she says evenly. “If you’d just left the list with him I’m sure this whole mess could have been avoided.” 

Nate snorts, but can’t actually think of another argument to make. Suddenly tired, he runs a hand over his face. “What play?” 

“Hmm?” Sophie’s looks back over at him, having diverted her gaze to the window momentarily, and shakes her head minutely. “Oh, oh. Pygmalion.” 

Nate’s interest is immediately peaked by this information. “And you’d be playing Eliza?” 

“Of course,” she bristles. “Or perhaps the professor. It really depends on the casting director.” 

It’s a testament to how much he cares about her that he doesn’t laugh at that. “I can’t wait to see it.” He says with a straight face. 

“Of course you can’t,” she agrees easily. “However you won’t, if we don’t get this con wrapped up by Thursday.” 

“We’ll be done tomorrow.” He repeats what he’d told everyone the day before. 

“Are you quite sure, because past incidents have-”

“We’ll be done tomorrow.” He repeats firmly. 

She bites back another objection and smiles. “Alright then.” 

“Alight,” he agrees, exhaling heavily. “Can we go to bed now?” 

Sophie casts one more worried look at the sink. “You mentioned something about exploding pipes?” 

“They won’t actually do that,” Nate tells her with a small smile. “Well,” he amends, “they probably won’t actually do that.” 

She continues to stare concernedly. Nate huffs a dramatic breath, knowing – but unable to prove – that she’s playing this up in order to get her way on the matter. “I’ll ask Eliot tomorrow to fix the damn sink.” 

“Will you?” She blinds him with a smile. “That would be wonderful.” 

“It’s insulting that you trust him more than me,” he grumbles, but doesn’t really mean it. 

“Only in matters relating to personal safety,” she breezes past him, letting her fingers drag feather-light over his chest on the way to the bedroom. “He is, after all, quite adept at keeping us alive.” 

“The damn sink isn’t gonna kill us,” Nate says. Though he’s no longer focused on the words he’s saying, Eliot, or anything having to do with pipes at all as he follows Sophie into the other room. 

\--

“That was fun.” Parker sips her beer – draft, because Sophie got it in her head some point that girls only order a bottle when they’re trying to make a point – and smiles at them. “What’s next?” 

“What’s next?” Eliot repeats with an eye roll. “What’s next is we take a day off and let me sleep.” 

She tilts her head at him curiously. “I thought you only slept ninety minutes a day.” 

Eliot, baffled by this statement, turns to his other side and quirks an eyebrow at Hardison. The hacker merely shrugs. “You did tell us that once.” 

He’s been getting memories back for weeks now – bits and pieces, moments and circumstances, enough to paint a pretty clear picture, enough to make him feel like everything is normal again – but, every once in   
a while, they’ll mention something that he hasn’t remembered yet, that he might never, and it frustrates him. 

He shakes his head now. “Yeah.” He says arbitrarily. “Sometimes.” 

Hardison and Parker exchange a look over his head. He can feel it, guess at their expressions, but purposely doesn’t look. He wants to order something stronger than beer. Wants to drown himself in it until his brain shuts off and lets him rest, but he knows he won’t. Drinking to excess isn’t safe. It would make _them_ not safe, and he thinks sometimes that that’s why Nate’s drinking had always been a thing with him. 

Good leaders don’t do that. Good leaders care more. But Nate’s an anomaly and probably always has been. At least, that’s what his memories have told him. That’s what his instincts have led him to believe; and he still trusts them more than anything else. 

“It was a good game, though, right?” Hardison nudges his shoulder, an obvious attempt to lighten the suddenly heavy mood between them. “Mathers is goin’ to jail. We got his sister the company and Sophie made a new friend.” 

“Yeah,” Parker adds, “Maybe she’ll start taking her shopping instead of us.” 

“What, y’don’t like shopping, mamma?” Hardison grins at the thief, letting slip the pet name that he uses with her sometimes. Eliot remembers the first time he’d done that – remembers the steranko and being twenty floors up on a window washing platform. Getting Parker out of that building had been his only goal, until she’d changed her mind about the whole thing and Nate had come up with a plan to accommodate her whim. 

It had gone against his nature, to let her stay in the building that was, in essence, the thing trying to kill her, but he’d done it. Maybe because he’d known there was no way he’d be able to change her mind, maybe because he’d trusted her - and Nate, and the others – to make it work. 

He doesn’t always remember _whys_ when he gets memories back. Sometimes he just has to guess. 

“I don’t mind it,” Parker’s saying now. “Sophie has a bunch of credit cards that aren’t really hers, so it’s almost the same thing as stealing, but I like going back when the stores close.” 

Eliot snorts outright. She would. 

“They’re not crowded, and no one stares at you like you’re weird,” she points out defiantly. “And they always have more stuff in the stockrooms than they do on the floor.” 

“Y’know they’ll go _get_ that stuff for ya if you ask,” Hardison mentions. 

Parker huffs. “I can do it myself.” 

They keep talking to each other, around him, because he’s sitting in the middle of them, but Eliot tunes them out. They bicker and disagree and debate, and...and he hasn’t thought about it much in the past two months, but Parker and Hardison, they’ve got this thing going on. 

Not the same kind of thing that Sophie and Nate have – it’s more immature than that, not as developed – but it has the potential to be. She’s crazy and he’s a genius. They’re both criminals and always have been. 

They both have broken ideas of what the world is supposed to be like. One day it might work out, but Eliot knows that day is a long time coming. 

He hopes he’s around to see it. 

“Hey man,” Hardison says to him, voice lower than it had been while Parker orders another beer. “How’s your arm?” 

Eliot flexes the appendage in question. His wrist, though it had felt broken when he’d busted out of the Russian’s restraints, had actually just been bruised. The knife wound on the back of that same arm had been neatly stitched by Nate the night he’d come home. He’s certainly worked with worse in his life. “It’s fine.” 

The hacker nods and looks like he wants to say something more, but before he can figure out what that something might be Parker’s attention is back on them. If she notices a shift in their moods she doesn’t comment. 

Instead, she taps the side of her beer mug and says, “Whaddya think an ice cream beer float would taste like?” 

Hardison sputters something intelligible and glances at his own beer like maybe he’s a little afraid of it now. Eliot answers simply, “Gross.” 

“Hmm,” she ponders it a minute more. “I wanna try it. Make it happen.” 

Eliot glances over to see which one of them she’d made that declaration at. “Why me?” He asks when her gaze doesn’t shift. 

“You cook.” 

“Putting beer and ice cream together doesn’t count as...” he takes a deep breath and stands up. “Yeah, okay.” 

She grins at him. Hardison’s shaking his head as Eliot shrugs on his jacket and heads for the door. The hitter’s pretty sure he hears the younger man tell Parker, “I don’t think he’s comin’ back tonight,” before he   
leaves the bar and takes a deep breath of stale, city air. 

TBC...


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.”  
>  ― Andy Warhol_

Chapter 9

\--

It’s been two months since they’d worked their first post-Eliot’s-brain-damage job. 

The hitter hasn’t mentioned his not-memories since those first few weeks of being home, but Nate has a feeling that he still relies on them from time to time, no matter how many real memories he gets back. 

They don’t talk about that much, either; the memories that Eliot’s recovered, but the mastermind makes a note every time Eliot mentions something from before his injury. And every time Eliot gets distressed over _not_ remembering, because no matter how well he thinks he’s hiding it, it’s always pretty obvious. 

Those instances, though, are getting fewer and farther between, and one day Nate finds himself planning a con without thinking once about what he’s going to need to tell Eliot, what the younger man might not remember. It’s liberating. It’s _normal_. 

And then they’re at the home of a man who’s pilfering charity funds into a personal bank account, and Eliot –there with him and Parker, playing a morally ambiguous lawyer – gets distracted on their way out by the mark’s farmland and stables. 

“How many horses do’ya got on the property?” Eliot asks the man, no doubt thinking about what might happen to the animals once their owner’s in jail. 

“Four that’re mine,” the man tells him with pride, “Six that belong to other trainers in the area. Why? You got an interest in buying?” 

“I might,” Eliot nods along. They hadn’t talked about this beforehand – Nate hadn’t known the man they’re taking down would have horses, for god’s sake – and there’s no time to discuss it now. Eliot lets his 

Southern drip heavily, “Raised in Oklahoma, y’know, always lookin’ for them roots out here.” 

“I hear ya, man.” The crook agrees with a sly grin. “Texas, myself.” 

While they’d been talking the man had been walking them towards the stables in question. Nate had been playing along for the sake of playing along – he knows Eliot likes horses, and it’s not like he gets to interact with them often during cons – but Parker, still there with them, has been slowing her pace until eventually she’s far enough behind them that Nate stops to let her catch up while Eliot and their mark keep walking. 

Nate lifts his shoulders and raises his hands, questioning her actions silently. “Come on,” he waves. He doesn’t like the idea of leaving Eliot alone with this guy. He’s not sure why, because it’s not like Eliot can’t handle himself better than any of them, but he doesn’t. “What’s the hold up?” 

“Nothing,” Parker shrugs, but she won’t meet his eyes. 

And then Nate remembers. “Still don’t like horses, huh?” 

She juts out her chin and crosses her arms. She won’t answer. 

“Wanna stay here while me and Eliot wrap this up?” 

She nods silently. 

Nate half smiles and trots into the stables after the other two men. There’s a cat posted near the door, and when it hisses at him Nate jumps back. Eliot and their mark, standing not twenty feet away, look up at the sound. 

“Where’s...Miranda?” Eliot asks, remembering Parker’s alias at the last second. Either’s he’s getting comfortable with this guy or it’s been too long since Eliot’s played the grift. Either way, Nate thinks it’s about time they get out of here. 

“Outside,” he answers shortly. “We should get back to the office and run those numbers for you,” he nods to the mark, who excuses them with a slight wave. 

Eliot follows him out without protest, but as soon as they’re out of earshot he starts in. “What happens to this guy’s land when we bust him?” 

“I don’t know,” Nate says tightly, not liking this moment. “A relative will get it probably. Or the Sherriff’s Department if he doesn’t have any.” 

The hitter nods and looks thoughtful. “Whaddya think-”

“Listen, Eliot,” Nate interrupts. He can see Parker now that they’re back outside, and she’s not far away. “A few years ago we ran a con in Kentucky. You led us to the client, said you knew the family.” 

“Aimee and Willy?” He looks at Nate, slowing down a bit. “I don’t...remember that.” 

“I didn’t think so,” the mastermind whispers, keeping Parker in his sights. “Look, we can fill you in on the details later, but what’s important right this second is that Parker...she’s got a thing about horses.” 

“A thing?” Eliot repeats. 

“She’s kinda terrified of them,” the mastermind rushes to get this out before she’s close enough to hear them. “I thought she might’ve gotten over it the last time, but apparently not.” 

Eliot glances away from him and looks instead to where Parker’s still waiting for them in the middle of the field, far away from the stables. 

The hitter swallows once and reaches up to loosen the tie around his neck. “Oh.” 

“Hey,” Parker greets them when they reach her, acting as normally as she ever does. “How’d that go?” She inclines her head towards where they’d been. 

“Good,” Eliot says, just as casually. “Gotta break back in tomorrow. Ya get a good look at his security system?” 

Parker answers and the two of them quickly drift into a conversation about criminal endeavors. Nate hangs onto the fringes of their dialogue, but can’t keep his mind from speculating about how this particular situation is going to play itself out. 

\--

“I wanna buy Harold’s land when this con is done,” Eliot starts without any preamble, sitting down at the table with him. 

Hardison looks up from his computer and the sandwich he’d been eating, carefully setting the remaining half down on the plate next to him so as not to get any crumbs on his keyboard. “Okay,” he pauses a   
moment and shrugs. “I guess I could make that happen. Man doesn’t have any family that I could find. I could get the auction expedited, maybe. Get all the ends tied up by the end of the month.” 

The hitter nods. “Good.” 

“Alright,” Hardison looks back at his screen and seriously considers not pushing the moment any farther. Then, of course, curiosity gets the better of him. “Why’re you so interested in this guy’s house?” 

“He’s got stables. Horses and stables.” 

Hardison instinctively looks over Eliot’s shoulder to see where Parker’s at. 

“She’s out with Sophie,” the hitter answers him, even though he hadn’t said a word. “she wouldn’t go near the horses. Nate had to tell me, ‘cause I don’t...but she seemed fine enough.” 

Hardison nods once, not liking the way his stomach’s clenching. He pushes his plate away, not so hungry anymore. “Did y’all talk about...” He trails off, not entirely sure what he’s trying to ask. 

“We planned tomorrow’s break-in,” the hitter says. “She’ll be able to get it done without going near the barn.” 

“Okay,” he breathes a little easier at that. 

“How was she last time?” Eliot’s looking him dead in the eye, ready to call him out on any possible bull.

“She...avoided them for most of the con,” Hardison says, thinking about Parker’s attitude in Kentucky, how on edge and agitated she’d been. “Then she...she had to get into the stable for us, steal the horse we were   
usin’ to play the mark with.” 

“Nate asked her to do that?” Eliot’s tone is a tie between pissed and curious. 

Hardison swallows thickly. “You did, actually.” 

“I did?” He parrots, disbelief etching over his features. 

“There was this girl,” Hardison shrugs. 

“Aimee,” Eliot nods, looking like he’s working it over in his head. Hardison doesn’t know what conclusions he comes to, but after a moment he breathes out and says, “I guess I can see that.” 

Hardison can’t tell what emotions are lurking there – never really can, when it comes to Eliot – so he just keeps talking. “She seemed pretty alright about the horses after that. Said they weren’t as deadly as she’d thought.” 

Eliot smiles shallowly, “She wasn’t alright today.” 

“Nah,” the hacker sighs, “I guess phobias don’t just disappear like that.” 

Eliot nods like he understands, and Hardison figures he probably does. “I wanna take her out Harold’s, when the con’s over. Maybe get her next to a horse again.” 

“Why?” Is the only response he can come up with. 

Eliot shakes his head and doesn’t respond. 

“Is that why ya wanna buy his land, too?” The hacker presses. 

The hitter picks up the sandwich he’d pushed away earlier and squints at it before setting it back on the plate and grabbing the pickle instead. He crunches down on it and shrugs. “Not really.” 

“Then why?” 

“Man’s got farmland and horses.” Eliot says evenly. “In Boston.” 

“Near Boston,” Hardison corrects. “And I don’t think that’s so uncommon around here.”

“I’ve never seen it.” Eliot finishes off his pickle and wipes his hands on his jeans. “Y’gonna help me or not?” 

Hardison’s instincts are screaming at him to say yes – and he’s pretty sure it’s not just because Eliot’s his friend and could whoop his ass if he wanted to – but he’s silent for a long moment, thinking it over. 

He wants to see Parker happy and to keep her safe, those have become constants in his life, and while what Eliot wants to do certainly isn’t going to put her in any kind of danger, it might threaten that first state that he strives for with her. 

“I don’t know, man,” he starts, “Are you sure this is such a good idea?” 

Eliot shrugs again, looking damn near casual about the whole matter. “I’m gonna get his farm with or without your help.” He says, and Hardison gets all of a sudden that Eliot’s so calm because he’s in control of this moment. 

“Then why’re you-”

“’Cause this is about Parker,” the hitter interrupts. “Not me an’ my fucked up brain, alight?” 

“I never _said_ anything about your brain,” the hacker balks some, feeling like Eliot’s attacking him. 

“Y’all don’t gotta say it. It’s been like this for months,” the hitter gestures agitatedly, his calm suddenly gone. “You’re questioning every move I make, ‘cause ya don’t know what’s behind it anymore. Am I tryin’ to   
keep you alive, or am I gonna forget what side I’m on?” 

“I haven’t thought that once,” Hardison hisses. 

“Of course you have,” Eliot counters like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, and that Hardison’s insulting him by saying otherwise. “Out of all’a you, I’m the only person who _stopped_ doin’ anything when we started this team. I used to be a monster, and you’re all terrified that I _forgot_ how to not be when I hit my head.” 

Hardison leans back in his chair, trying to physically distance himself from Eliot’s words. “I never thought you were a damn _monster_ , man,” he hates even saying that word. “And I’d bet every computer I own that the others don’t, either.” 

The hitter shakes his head, “Stop lyin’ to me.”

“I aint lying to you,” Hardison says firmly. “If you seriously believe that we’re scared of you...well, I think the psychological term for that is transference.” 

Eliot looks up sharply. “What are you sayin’?”

“You aint no idiot hick,” the hacker snaps, “No matter what you try to get everyone else to believe. I _know_ you, man, even of you can’t remember that, I do. You know _exactly_ what I’m sayin’. And, y’know what? You’re right. It aint got nothin’ to do with your fucked up brain.” 

\--

TBC...


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“The clock ticks; the taunting rhythm serving as a reminder that forward is the only way we can go. The mechanical heartbeat of the darkness, a cold ellipsis, punctuating years gone by._
> 
> _Arising unchained._
> 
> _No glorious hymn, just the steady beat of the illusion of time. We heal or we carry forward the weight of our wounds... To believe otherwise is the mendacity of desperation._
> 
> _Arising honestly._
> 
> _The miles behind are littered with the weight of nostalgia, but too many miles lay ahead us to carry the weight. In the end, even echoes fade away._
> 
> _Pen in hand..._
> 
> _Arising to write the next chapter._
> 
> _(MU Articles 2013, Dedication to Joey)”  
>  ― Shannon L. Alder_

Chapter 10

\--

“What are we doing out here?” Parker asks evenly, swinging her legs off the back of his tailgate. “Harold went to jail last week.” 

Eliot looks out over the farmland that isn’t his yet but will be soon enough. From up here on the hill it seems so expansive; rolling plains of green grass, tall trees, and mile long fences colored abstract hues from the rays of the setting sun. 

It looks like Oklahoma and smells like Kentucky. It feels like home. 

“He did,” Eliot breathes out easily, wishing they were on horseback for this moment, rather than sitting in the bed of his truck. Parker’s still afraid of horses, though, and the ones that had been here are staying elsewhere until the land sells in the upcoming auction. 

“Then why are we here?” For all her questions, Parker doesn’t seem in any big rush to leave this place. Eliot imagines that she likes the calmness of it, maybe feels still sitting here with him. 

“We just are,” he answers sagely, wondering how far she’ll push it. 

“Oh.” She takes a breath and continues kicking her feet through the air. “The sky’s pretty.” She comments. 

Eliot nods his agreement. The sunset is gorgeous; textbook definition of a natural wonder. “Set there by the hand of god,” he hears himself saying. 

Parker swivels her head and arches an eyebrow at him. “You believe in god?” She asks it lightly, as if religion isn’t an issue over which wars have been fought. 

He smiles at her without a trace of sadness or regret. “Nah.” There was a time when that answer would have broken his heart all over again; now, he accepts the truth of life and moves on. “Jus’ somethin’ my mom used to say.” 

She nods at his answer and silence falls down between them once again. 

Eliot had brought her here to tell her about his plans to buy the land and the horses that Harold had owned, he was going to gauge her reactions and see whether or not his idea of getting her over her phobia was worth anything. That’s why he’d brought her here, originally; but once he’d parked his truck on this hill all the words he’d planned out had left him. 

He’s never been big on talking, and forcing himself to do it these past few months – to reassure them, to try and make himself feel better – has taken its toll. Sitting in silence feels like a reprieve. 

Of course, silence can only last so long when there’s another person with you, and when Parker starts talking again Eliot feels almost sad. 

He knows he’d just had one of those moments that he’ll never forget, a flash memory that he’ll go back to for years to come, one that will make him think _calm_ and family when he’s feeling chaotic or alone. 

“Harold has a couple cars down in that garage over there,” Parker points over the land, and Eliot follows her finger until he can just barely make out what she’s gesturing to. “A Jaguar, a Volkswagen, and a truck   
kinda like yours. It’s a weird mix.”

Eliot nods his agreement. 

“Why do you think he’s got a collection like that?” Parker goes on, not needing much to keep the conversation going by herself. “Most people who have a lot of cars have a similar _kind_ of car. Or cars in a   
similar price range,” Eliot remembers about her being a car thief in her youth, and knows that that’s where this knowledge is coming from. “But his are all different, like maybe they belong to other people.” 

“Pink slips all had his name on ‘em,” Eliot reminds her, pulling his feet up and crossing his legs. 

She huffs. “I think we should steal them and give them back to the people they belong to,” she pauses for a moment before adding innocently, “Or, you know, keep them, if we can’t find the owners.” 

Eliot laughs, “Sure. We can do that,” Parker’s beaming at him until he adds, “Soon as you get Nate to agree.” Then she’s frowning deeply. 

“Mean,” she pouts at him. 

He just grins widely, because he really does like messing with her. 

The sunset gets darker as the minutes tick by. Watching it do that used to make Eliot angry – maybe sad – because something that had been beautiful moments ago was disappearing and there was nothing he could do to stop it. At some point he’d gotten over that, though; he’d learned to take what he could get until it was gone and then move on. Because there are some things that he just can’t fight for.

“Hey, Parker,” he nudges her side but doesn’t look over at her, just waits until he feels her eyes on him. “Next time ya talk to Hardison, tell’em he was right, a’right?” 

“Hmm,” she rests her elbows on her knees and leans forward. “About what?” 

“Just somethin’ he said to me,” Eliot says easily. 

“You never used to tell Hardison that he was right,” she says. “Is that something you do now because your brain got broken?” 

Eliot laughs lightly. “Maybe,” he admits. “Maybe I just don’t remember how I’m supposed to do things.” 

“You do things like Eliot,” she shrugs, “What other way is there?” 

He really wishes it could be that simple. As far as she knows, as far as any of them know – except for Nate, because covering for each other is a trend with them – there _is_ only one way for him to be. He’s   
just Eliot. Their hitter, their friend, the guy who takes the punishment so they don’t have to. 

He’s okay with being that guy, regardless of what he does or doesn’t remember about how he’d gotten here. His instincts had told him the moment he’d woken up from his coma that these people, no matter who   
they might be, are trustworthy. They’re people you protect his brain, broken as it may have been, had let him know; and even though he’d run from them in the beginning, he’d had every intension of letting them   
catch him. 

He remembers more now. Enough that being that guy isn’t just _okay_ anymore, not just something he’s alright dealing with. It’s what he wants. This life with them...he doesn’t remember why he’d chosen it, or why he’d decided to trust them in the first place, but he remembers why he does _now_. And he won’t ever give that up without a fight. 

He didn’t think he’d ever get anything like this ever again – sitting on a tailgate watching the sun set with a friend he cares about like a sister; and the fact that she doesn’t know what kind of man he used to be, the kind of man he can still be from time to time in order to keep them alive...well, then that’s even better. 

He wishes it were as simple as Parker seems to think it is. But, in a way, it _is_ that simple, because it’s that simple to her. To her, and to Hardison and Sophie, he’s just this guy that cares about them. They don’t know that he could kill them all in under ten seconds flat. Or that he’s picked up a gun for them. Not even Nate knows how many bodies are buried in his past, and none of them have a clue about how he still   
craves the kill sometimes. 

There are some things he’ll just never share, and that’s alright. That keeps it simple. 

“Eliot?” Parker says. “Are you okay?” 

“I’m fine,” the hitter answers. “Why?” 

“You looked...sad,” she tilts her head at him. 

“I’m not sad,” he informs her in no uncertain terms. “I was just thinkin’.” 

“About what?” She presses, always curious. 

He looks at the sunset, which is nearly gone by now, and tells her honestly, “About you, and the team.”

“Did you find another memory?” She asks. 

“No,” he shakes his head and smiles. “No, not a memory. More like...a reason.” 

“I don’t...think I know what that means,” she says carefully, touch of nervous fear in her tone.

He takes a breath and tries to find words that she’ll understand. Simple words. Eventually he settles on, “It means that my brain’s not so broken anymore.” 

They’re a part of his life now, is what it really means, a huge part that he’d do anything to keep intact. 

He’ll be damned if something as inconsequential as forgetting them is going to make him forget that.

Fin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted to say thanks to everyone for reading this story. I love the comments and the kudos, and I really hope this ending was a good one for all of you :)


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